Forester
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: Highlander/Once Upon A Time crossover. What if the origin of Immortals was even more complicated than either "Highlander 2" or "The Source" ever hinted at? Baby Emma came through during the time period when 'Grimms Fairy Tales' were actually being told and written, and then she died, was killed… and revived as an Immortal.
1. Prologue

Title: The Forester

Author: Joshua

Disclaimer: Don't own 'Once Upon A Time' or any of its characters. Don't own Highlander, any of its characters, nor the concept of 'Immortals' and the Game. References to the mini-series "Highlander: The Source", but no actual spoiling. Well, maybe the 'epilogue'.

Summary: Highlander/Once Upon A Time crossover. What if the origin of Immortals was even more complicated than either "Highlander 2" or "The Source" ever hinted at? Baby Emma came through during the time period when 'Grimms Fairy Tales' were actually being told and written, and then she died, was killed… and revived as an Immortal.

Premise: Because she's magical and from 'another world', but mostly because she's a foundling, Emma fits the bill of a pre-Immortal just fine. Switch things up a bit so that she comes across in the early 1800's, when Fairy Tales were first being published and spread more effectively. Also, set it up so that her death occurs on her 28th birthday and exactly 200 years later she comes across Storybrooke. Maybe have her Teacher be Duncan, or Amanda. Neal is still Baelfire and trapped in Neverland until the late 80's. For… whatever reason, Storybrooke still appears at the same time and same everything as canon states. Call it 'time differential between worlds' or whatever. It happened with the Rabbit in 'Wonderland', it can happen here with the Tree/Cupboard baby Emma was sent through. Emma uses same style of sword that her father uses and therefore that 'she' uses in canon. Henry is Emma's natural born biological child, and a pre-Immortal. She's not explaining why or how.

"Forester" - A person in charge of a forest or skilled in planting, managing, or caring for trees. A person, or animal, living in a forest. Someone whose origin can be traced back to the Enchanted Forest.

Prologue: _The History of Emma_

Amanda prided herself on her ability to survive. Part of that was due to her status as an Immortal. The rest was just good instincts and decent skill. She always paid attention when her gut told her to stay or go. To stay in the shadows, hidden while guards or patrolmen searched for any sign of her. Or to skip town because she'd been exposed or things were getting a bit too hot.

It was one of the reasons she was currently in the Americas at the moment. And while normally she might be shacking up with a local businessman, or making like she was a noble on holiday from Europe, so soon after the war where England's colonies had declared their independence and formed their own nation, the 'United States of America', it wasn't a great idea to be a wealthy noblewoman on her own in Boston or New York these days.

So she'd headed north from Boston, into the forest wilds. She knew a French trapper in the colonies there that could put up with her for a little while. At least until her more recent crimes were forgotten and she had better prospects available to her. It was why she was in the woods, walking through the forest, rather than along the main road. It was why she was there at all. In hindsight, she'd wonder about that.

That was when the tree exploded in front of her.

She wasn't killed, which was fortunate. And her travelling cloak protected her from most of the splinters. For a time she feared that she was under attack or had stumbled upon idiots playing with gunpowder or cannons. Neither were the case, though she might have preferred if it had been.

The tree itself wasn't destroyed. Only one side of it had been, and it opened onto a smooth hollowed out space that clearly had not been there before. Because inside that hollowed out space was a little crying newborn baby, wrapped up in a hand-spun wool blanket. The baby's name had been embroidered in silk into the blanket. Emma.

Not exactly experienced with babies, Amanda was hesitant to even approach the squalling infant, but she was literally the only soul around for miles and it would surely die if she didn't do something!

Cooing, as she'd seen midwives and mothers do for babies before, she gently and as carefully as possible, picked the baby up and held her close. The baby was obviously a she and not just from the name on the blanket either. Looking around for something to do, Amanda decided that she needed to make camp and deal with everything else after. Jacques was at least three days away, and that was when she was by herself. A baby complicated things and slowed her down, but Amanda was no monster. She would not abandon this child.

She just needed somebody to foist her off onto.

Her trapper friend wasn't really an option. Not just because he was an Immortal ex-lover that she planned on swindling out of all his hard-earned cash, but he really wasn't the child-rearing type. No, she needed a nice mortal couple that she could probably sell the child to, claiming to be the matron of an orphanage seeking to give the newborn a good home. Dropping her off at an actual orphanage, or worse a convent, was not an option for Amanda. Too many bad memories.

"Not to worry, little Emma," Amanda said to the still crying infant. "We'll figure something out. For right now though, Auntie Amanda needs to get a fire going and then find us some food for you to eat. Won't that be nice?"

The baby continued to cry at the top of her lungs.

As though fate were listening to the Immortal Thief's needs, she was startled a moment later as a cow came up to them, mooing and chewing on grass. Even from the brief distance, she could see that it was a female cow and from the looks of it was bred for dairy production.

"Even I know that goats milk would be better for a newborn!" Amanda cried to the universe.

Ten seconds later, a goat with a rope around its neck joined the cow in chewing the spot of grass. Amanda smirked and looked to the heavens and said rather saucily, "Now about that fire…"

 _10 Months Later_

Amanda was back in England. She'd brought Emma with her, easily able to 'pretend' being the little girl's mother after her crucible in the northern forests of Maine. She'd also discovered a few things about the little baby during all their time together. No, it wasn't difficult at all to pretend to be the child's mother. Yet as attached as she'd become to the little darling, she had to give her up. Hers was not a lifestyle for raising children, and she'd been at it for nearly a thousand years already and she wasn't about to change now.

Which is why they were in England so soon after she'd abandoned Europe for better prospects. Amanda had found baby Emma a family with which to live. And even better, she'd gotten her old friend and Teacher, Rachel to watch over them.

Amanda didn't know the whole story, but she knew that quite recently the Darlings had lost a daughter, whether to death or kidnapping, everyone was being intentionally vague, but they were seeking to fill the void left by the girl's departure from their lives. She'd met them, several times now, and determined that they were a good family. Nice and normal and stable and above all else, loving. Which is what every child needs.

"Are you sure about this?" Rachel asked as they waited on the stoop before the Darlings Victorian home. "Settling down might do you some good Amanda, and with this child… well, I can see that you've already thought about it, haven't you?"

"More often than you realize, darling," Amanda chuckled. "You'll watch out for her? I know I'm out of options by this point, but the rumors about their eldest daughter disappearing like that… well, they concern me."

"I've already looked into it," Rachel assured her. "She was kidnapped, and neither of the parents had anything to do with it. The boys say that a shadow took her to some make believe place called Neverland, but children often make believe what they cannot understand of the world."

"Yes," Amanda agreed, but by then the conversation was over as the door opened suddenly.

"Amanda, Rachel," the Lady Darling greeted them with a warm and open smile. Though a touch of sadness remained in her eyes, these days it never seemed to leave. "Welcome. And hello Emma! Is… uh, is today the day?"

They remained in the foyer for a few moments, all three women cooing and tickling the happy little infant. Then things got serious when another giggling little girl came running in, being chased by the big family dog.

"Oh, and who is this?" Amanda asked, holding Emma to her a little tighter.

"This is Alice," Mrs. Darling answered, smiling down at the blond toddler that was trying to hide amongst her skirts. "Her family have been good friends to us in these… trying times. Her father, Edwin, is my husband's business partner. They're visiting for the day. We, uh, we had no idea that you would be coming today."

"Quite all right," the dark haired Immortal assured her. "Hello Alice."

"Hi!" the giggling little girl said, peeking from behind the skirts of her hiding spot, trying to stay away from the enthusiastic and excited dog.

Seeing new playmates, the dog, Nanna, began to bark loudly. Amanda and Rachel both looked down, concerned, at the no longer sleeping babe in the former's arms. To everyone's surprise, Emma fussed only a littled before working one chubby little arm free and waving it in the barking dog's direction. Nanna quieted down immediately and sat down on her haunches, the world's best behaved dog all of a sudden. Amanda had a sudden impulse to introduce Emma to Nanna and vice versa.

Kneeling, so she was face to face with both Nanna and Alice, Amanda held out Emma in her arms so both could get a look at her.

"Amanda…" Rachel began to say, but was stunned into silence as were all the other adult witnesses (Edwin and Mr. Darling had come into the foyer from the study where they'd just concluded their meeting, as had Alice's mother when Mrs. Darling hadn't returned from getting the door).

Baby Emma reached out on her own and grabbed the huge sheepdog by it's cold wet nose. Nanna huffed, but remained still, letting the baby do what all babies do. Alice stepped forth from her hiding spot and petted the dog more properly on her head. "What's her name?" the little blond girl asked, so sweet and innocent that Amanda couldn't dare deny her a thing.

"Emma," she answered.

"Hello Emma," Alice introduced herself to the 10-month-old. "My name is Alice. We're going to be friends."

"Yes, darling, I believe you will be," Amanda laughed gently, watching both girls bond.

 _20 Years Later_

"So, you're the man that my best friend fell in love with, was devastated to the point of insanity, and very nearly died for on multiple occasions, and also the reason that she returned to Wonderland-without me I might add-again? You're Cyrus?" the blue-eyed blond said, arms crossed as she eyed the Middle-Eastern twentyish-year-old man up and down.

"Indeed I am," he nodded, bowing slightly.

"Uh huh," Emma exchanged looks with Alice, who was barely restraining her giggles as it was. Where the older girl's hair had darkened to brown, except at the tips, Emma's had remained golden throughout her life growing up. She'd just returned from a trip abroad with her 'Aunts' Amanda and Rachel, only finding out about Alice's stay in an asylum, and adventures in Wonderland after the whole thing was over and done with. Apparently when she'd announced shortly after her eighteenth birthday that Amanda and Rachel would be taking her on this 'trip', Alice decided it would be a good time to start looking for a way back into Wonderland to get the proof her father needed to finally believe her. "I thought he'd be bigger."

Alice lost the fight with containing her giggles.

"What is so funny?" Cyrus questioned, looking between the two women. Both of whom were now laughing their shapely asses off. "What?"

"I'm glad you're back Emma," Alice said, hugging her childhood friend, the only one that truly believed her about Wonderland growing up. Partly because during their early teen years, they'd gone there together. Yet even before that, Emma had believed. Probably because what she'd grown up believing. Her older brothers, both now missing as her 'older sister' was as well, had raised her on stories of how their family had taken in a runaway boy named Baelfire and how he'd then sacrificed himself to keep Michael from being taken by the Shadow. Wendy had then gone to plead for Baelfire's return and hadn't been seen since. When John turned twenty-one, he and nineteen-year-old Michael had sought out the Shadow and means to get to Neverland to rescue their long lost sister, leaving behind their devastated parents and their seventeen year old baby sister, Emma. The Darlings had been lost in a shipwreck soon after. Hence the trip abroad with her 'Aunts' that had lasted for close to three years and ensured that she'd missed so much in her best friend's life.

"So, is Rabbit still here?" Emma asked, looking about, having had her fun at Cyrus's expense.

"No, he's gone back to be with his family," Alice said.

"Aw, I never get to have any fun," she pouted, but quickly changed moods. "So, what do you think of your new baby sister?"

"Oh, she's wonderful!" Alice gushed. The two women continued to talk, leaving Cyrus behind in the garden. A few moments later, Will Scarlet, the once Knave of Hearts, came practically running out of the house to join Cyrus in the garden. Edwin was quick to follow.

"You two certainly left in a hurry," Cyrus observed.

"Bloody hell mate, if there is anything that I know, its when to get out of the kitchen," Will said with certainty born of experience. Painful experience. "And your lady talking with my lady, I can deal with that because I'm usually the referee and they've got history. Your lady with my lady, Ed here's lady, _and_ Alice's childhood friend? Who looks really familiar by the way, just can't place her. That's a little too hot for my tastes, thank you very much."

"I'm suddenly feeling something that I never, ever thought I would feel," Cyrus suddenly stated.

"What is that, my boy?" Alice's father inquired.

"Happy," he said, sounding surprised at himself, "that my mother is gone. Because she wouldn't hesitate to join in, I know it."

All three men shivered in dread at the mere thought.

 _Eight Years Later_

The year was 1811. Ironically, October 22, 1811. It was her birthday. How fitting that she should die on her twenty-eighth birthday. That was her last thought before blackness consumed her.

It was broken a moment later by the stroke of lightning.

At least that is what it felt like to her. One moment, blackness, the next a jolt of energy strikes out from her core to her entire body like a bolt of lightning. She gasps, every muscle in her body tense and flexing as her heart began pumping out extra adrenaline and endorphins. Not that science had properly identified those particular chemicals in the body, but the effect and reasons were the same and always had been.

Slowly, the blood-drenched woman got her breathing under control and she sat up, looking down at herself. She gulped back the instinctive gag at the sight of so much blood, covering _her_ , and took a closer look at herself rather than just her clothes.

She was fine.

More than that, she was whole, she was healthy, and most importantly, she wasn't stabbed through the gut with a fishing knife. Damned bastard had gotten her with a damned _fishing knife_! At least she'd gotten him back. Although, considering she was no longer injured-even the scrapes and bruises she'd acquired during the night were gone!-it would make things a tad difficult to explain to the constables. That is what she thought, until she took a closer look at her surroundings.

She was no longer in the back alley of London's criminal underbelly. She was in a place she'd only been to a handful of times, and it had always been to identify a dead body, usually of a client that had hired her to bring in a bounty, or the bounty she was looking for so she could claim the lesser reward. She was in the morgue.

"Not good," she declared and started looking for alternative means of attire. She was still dressed, so that meant they hadn't done the autopsy yet. That was probably the only good bit of news she had at the moment.

"Really miss Alice at times like these," she mumbled as she began gathering sheets, half expecting she'd need to sew herself a dress in the next few minutes. Fortunately in her collecting, she'd uncovered the bin where the discarded clothes of the dead were, well… discarded. Sorting through them, she found a dress that was close enough to her size and was in reasonable condition (no blood, no gaping holes in the middle or the back, and didn't smell too bad either). She kept her own shoes, and fashioned a few torn sheets into a loincloth and breast band for undergarments and donned the dress. There was absolutely no way she was going to even consider the dead's underwear!

Now came the hard part, getting out of the morgue without being detected. Or missed, she realized as she walked past the chalkboard that showed the number of incoming bodies for the night. She erased and wrote in the number with one less. Then she went back to her London flat, grateful to discover along the way that she'd only been 'out of it' for a single night. It wasn't yet the morning of the 23rd of October, though it was after midnight.

It wouldn't be for another two weeks, when her Aunt Amanda stopped by with an 'old friend', that she learned the truth about what had happened that night. Duncan Macleod of the Clan Macleod was soon proclaimed her Teacher, seeing as Amanda no longer had the patience for dealing with her bounty hunter niece, and since Duncan was there…

Well, it was a match made by Amanda when she was doing her best to foist off responsibility as quickly as possible. Both of the Immortals were familiar with her by now and took the matter in hand. They got even with her.

 _One Year Later_

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" the Scotsman asked as he stood next to his Student, across the field from her soon-to-be opponent. Duncan hated to admit it, but he'd grown attached to this spunky little girl that Amanda had found in the woods one day and brought 'home' with her. He'd taught her everything he was able, and thanks to his time in China and Japan, that was more than he'd previously could have. The rest was all her.

"Am I sure? No," Emma grumbled, still wishing there was some way around killing this person, but… He hadn't even done anything to her, not really. Apparently he thought she'd done plenty though, because from the moment he met her the other day, he'd challenged her and wouldn't stop until she accepted. "Am I ready? We'll find out, I guess."

"Don't guess, know," Duncan offered as one last bit of advice. "Are you sure you don't want me to challenge him if he… you know?"

"No, don't," the blond bounty hunter shook her head. "It's bad enough that I have to try and kill him because of his damned pride. I don't want you to go on some revenge kick and start up a cycle that will never end. This ends with me and him."

"And what if he has somebody wanting revenge against you for killing him?" Duncan argued.

"I don't see them waiting in the wings, do you?" she pointed out. "I'll deal with that if it comes up, but this is all his fault as it is. I don't want to kill him, but he's left me little choice. Tell me you've never challenged someone just to get an easy Quickening?"

"I never have and I never will," he said, offended at the merest suggestion.

"Finished saying goodbye to your whore, Macleod?" the bastard called out. "Too bad I can't enjoy her a bit myself before taking her power. Oh well, easy come, easy go!"

Looking back over her shoulder as she approached the other Immortal, Emma remarked to her Teacher, "You know what I said about not wanting to kill him? That is no longer the case."

"Oh good, the swan has claws," the headhunter mocked, 'saluting' her with his rapier.

She merely spread out her skirts and grasped her English short sword with both hands, and intoned, "There can be only one."

The fight was fairly short after that. And the conclusion, well, at least to Duncan, was not surprising at all. Emma may not have been all that powerful, especially considering she'd been Immortal for less than a year, but she made up for that by being smart and playing to her strengths while taking advantage of any weaknesses her enemy may have. In this particular case, his enormous ego.

It was child's play (literally) for her to call out taunts and verbally abuse him to the point that he lost all semblance of control and let his rage consume him. Then she danced around him, yes, _danced_. Swirling and twirling with her skirts, deflecting with her sword and dodging to the side with well-timed and placed steps, placing small scratches and slicing up his clothes in the process. Until finally he was so exhausted that Duncan thought he'd lose his grip on his sword before too much longer. Before that could happen though, Emma decided to end it.

Raising her head, chin out, a display of her resolve, she went in for the kill.

For just a moment, a heartbeat of time, Duncan feared that is exactly what the bastard had been waiting for, as he moved and struck with such sudden speed that even the Highlander would be hard-pressed to keep up with. Emma, however, had things well in hand. She twirled past the rapid strike and drove the point of her own blade up through the man's soft underbelly into his heart. She pulled it out and stepped back before any blood could get on her. Just as he collapsed to his knees, already dead, he just didn't know it yet, he looked up at her and spat a mouthful of blood in her direction. She finished it with a single stroke.

Duncan nodded with approval. Clean. Efficient. No hesitation.

The electric white mist flew up from the body and began the process known to Immortals as the Quickening.

Duncan and other Immortals she knew had done their best to prepare her for it. Too bad that the one thing they all agreed upon was that there was no preparing for it. It was a pain so intense it transformed to ecstasy. It was power incarnate, in every sense of the word. It was indescribable.

Aside from the raw sensations assaulting her though, there were the mental and emotional flashes that really drove it home. She knew everything about the bastard that had challenged her. Not like she was watching his life play out before him or like she had his memories. More like she *knew* him, and at the same time if anyone asked her a question about him she could probably answer it. They were right, it was indescribable.

Instinct.

That is the only word that she could use to describe it. His instincts and knowledge and emotions and power were becoming a part of her own instincts. Less so with the knowledge, thankfully less so with the emotions, and the power… well, hard to ignore the power when it was still coursing through her.

And then it came to an end.

Emma collapsed to the ground, weak and disoriented. Duncan rushed over to catch her and help her back to her feet.

"... I don't think I like that," she said to him, before collapsing in his arms.

 _Seventy-One Years Later_

"I cannot believe you sometimes!" Emma screamed at her 'aunt' as they ran along the London rooftops.

"You love it darling, and you know it!" Amanda laughed as they made their way from the secure property they'd just robbed and back toward Amanda's hideout… at one of the most upscale and expensive hotels in the city.

"These… birthday parties that you throw me? They usually mean a lot of trouble for me at some point!" the blond argued as they began to make their way back down to street level.

"Can you say that Duncan's are any better?" the Immortal Thief teased.

"Well… not as fun, certainly," Emma was careful to watch her words. "But at least I don't have to take on jobs in other countries for a decade or two."

"When are you heading back to Boston, by the way?"

Emma sighed and pulled out their dresses that they'd hidden away earlier in the evening here.

"The ship leaves the day after tomorrow," she answered, stripping off the 'thief clothes' she'd worn while helping Amanda… 'acquire' her "birthday present", and just as quickly donning the dress. "According to all records, I'll be on the Queen Elizabeth, bound for New York on a three week journey, first class all the way."

"But really?" Amanda smirked knowingly.

"For me to know and my enemies to find out… or not," Emma smirked back.

As they made their way back to the hotel, just two ladies walking along the streets, spending their "husbands" hard-earned money, Emma reminisced about her last century of life. Tonight was her one hundredth birthday. Amanda often made fun of how she was the only Immortal she'd known in her millennium that had actually died on their birthday and could get to celebrate becoming an Immortal at the same time. As such, the woman that had found and rescued her from a hole in a tree in the middle of the New England forests, made it a point to always celebrate the event with something to remember it. Tonight, being her one hundredth year of life, to the day, had to be something really special.

So, after a day of being pampered, all on 'the boys' dime of course, (Conner, Duncan, and Fitzcairn always managed to get together to help celebrate Emma's birthdays), and a party at the best venue in London, also paid for by the men-who'd all still gotten her presents-Amanda had announced that she hadn't gotten her gift yet. Which is when they left and the Immortal Bounty Hunter and the Immortal Thief went out and tested the former's skill. By breaking into the Bank of London and stealing a priceless jewel out of Amanda's own safety deposit box. The 'added security' put there by the thief in the box hadn't been fun, but didn't do much to stop her either.

She liked the necklace that was her actual gift though. Besides, who needed the twin to the Hope Diamond? Something like that doesn't get stolen and sold off. Just hidden and lost for a "time" before getting found and turned over to whoever last "owned" it.

In reflecting upon the last day, she further reflected on all that she had accomplished and done in a century. Growing up with the Darlings was fun and an adventure worth having. Especially as she got to play and stay with her best friend Alice a lot of the time. When Alice discovered and told everyone about Wonderland, she was the only one to believe her. And her faith was well-warranted as when they were both young teenagers, they discovered how to return, or rather how to get the attention of the White Rabbit so he could take them back to Wonderland. Each time though, the 'proof' Alice always sought was taken from their grasp at the last second, or something else happened where they had to give it up rather than take it back with them. Still, those were fun times.

After Alice got married to Cyrus and had a little girl of her own, Emma went back to Wonderland one final time and discovered what she wanted to do with her life. She found out the Truth. Oh, she'd always known she'd been adopted, and Amanda told her the story of how she'd been found in the hollow of a tree that had basically just exploded. No, the Truth was that she wasn't from America, or England, or even anywhere on Earth really. She was from a realm known as the Enchanted Forest. The Rabbit tried to take her there, but something had changed. The entire place was frozen, and only the Rabbit's Hole being kept open prevented them from being frozen along with everything else. What was truly odd was that he'd just been there, just prior to searching out the Knave to get Alice, and everything had been fine. A bit desolate, but nothing frozen as it was now.

It wasn't so much the discovery of the Truth, but rather the journey that lead to it. All throughout her solo adventure in Wonderland, she kept having to hunt down various characters and then retrieve numerous artifacts and bric a brac for a variety of reasons. She realized she was really good at it. And so she became a Bounty Hunter when the Rabbit returned her home. Which, unfortunately, lead to her first death.

It didn't change her mind about doing it though, and she was pretty good at tracking people down. Helped that she had a knack for knowing when people were lying to her and had picked up quite a few deductive skills over the years that let her ferret out the truth. She'd once-when she was about fifty-considered going into law enforcement, becoming a police officer. Except that was in the 1840's and not even America was liberal enough to have a woman as anything other than a secretary in the typing pool for any government agency, let alone as a detective on the police force.

There were rumors, stories mostly, of towns out in the Wild West, or the middle of nowhere between the Mississippi and California, where there were women sheriffs or 'deputized' US Marshalls running around catching criminals just as effectively as their male counterparts. Some were proven to be stories, while most were either killed in the line of duty or 'reassigned' the moment anyone in Washington heard about it. Of course in Europe, it was absolutely unheard of anywhere as the most a woman could hope for was 'working behind the scenes' or something like that.

Emma was satisfied with her bounty hunting career. She didn't need approval or oversight or even the respect of her peers or the people around her. All she needed was the bounty, or proof of, and they gave her the cash. Simple as that.

Sure, there were cheats out there, who thought they could pull one over on her. That's where her skill at seeing through lies came in real handy. Drove Amanda nuts though.

More recently, she'd been working out of the Northeast of the United States and Southeastern Canada. Part of her hoped to find some trace of that tree that brought her here, help her find out why her homeland was frozen the way that it was. Not that she'd been back to check on it in more than seventy years, but the Rabbit was her friend and she wasn't going to risk taking him from his family just to satisfy her curiosity. She'd find another way into the Enchanted Forest.

One possibility that struck her as the best option was finding that tree that Amanda had told her about, the one that had exploded and left her behind in a hollowed out space in the tree. If that was how she got _into_ this world, then maybe, just maybe, it would let her return to the other world, the world she was from.

So, between jobs, Emma spent most of her time scouring the forests, trying to find the tree, hoping that it hadn't been cut down or destroyed over the years. As a direct result of this, she learned a lot about forestry and taking care of the trees and animals that lived there. And as a consequence of this, the Immortals she'd encountered over the years had taken to calling her…

"Forester, eh?" Amanda said, breaking her concentration.

"Huh? Wait, what?" she asked.

"You're not even paying attention, are you?" the brunette accused the blond.

"I was… reflecting," Emma replied sagely.

"Mm-hmm," she hummed knowingly.

"Now what was that about… Forester?" A change of subject was needed, she thought.

"I recently heard some rumors, is all," Amanda confessed. "About a blue-eyed blond woman that is as powerful and skilled as a certain pair of cousins. Took me a while to connect the dots. So you are this… Forester, I keep hearing about, Emma, darling?"

"Guilty," she shrugged.

"Why Forester?" she was asked.

"Why are Duncan and Conner called 'Highlander' if they hardly ever visit the Scottish Highlands? Why are any of ' _us_ ' given titles and nicknames in the first place? It sort of just happened. I don't mind though, so I'm not about to stop it. Besides, if I tried, they'd just use it more to annoy me or taunt me into pointless fights. And you know how I try to avoid those."

"Hm, have you considered… broadening your horizons? Just a bit?" Amanda suggested.

The sudden change it topic brought Emma up short.

"What have you heard?" she asked.

"Oh nothing much, just that… a certain Immortal Witch, not that I happen to believe in that sort of thing, is seeking the Forester, and has put the word out," her 'Aunt' explained. "I haven't told the boys yet, but it is only a matter of time. I don't think they would connect this 'Forester' with you though. Maybe try Africa?"

"Africa?" Emma exclaimed, giving the woman a dull look. "With my complexion, hair, and eyes? Might as well say China. No thank you, Amanda. I'm not running. And no matter who or what this… witch is, I'll face her in my own way and my own time. I don't run."

 _Thirteen Years Later_

"I thought you didn't run?"

She jumped, looking up through the foliage of the underbrush to the red/brown-haired woman standing there on the cliff. How did she find her? Ever since that last birthday in London, when Amanda told her of the rumors regarding some Immortal Witch looking for the Forester, her life had never been the same. She'd been hounded by this _witch_ and the rumors that she spawned, and never permitted a moments peace. She was currently in Australia, playing to the advantage of the many, many, many European settlers and tourists visiting and seeking adventure. She was able to blend in, and while the natives, the Aborigines, knew she was different, everyone else that actually mattered and could even hint as to who she truly was would just think she was another European lady off on an adventure. She hadn't had much luck.

"Well," Emma answered the witch that had been hounding her for more than a decade, "when I kept getting challenged by every Headhunter and power-hungry ratbags across the known world, all because of a damned bloody _rumor_ of _YOU_ looking for _ME_! Couldn't do a damned bloody thing back in the States without getting challenged and either having to fight or kill somebody every other week! You'd think it was the damned bloody Gathering already!"

"I apologize," the woman, who wore only a simple, pure white cotton dress, common for these parts. "That was not my intention. It was not the lifestyle that forced you to run though, was it?"

"He wanted to use me against you," Emma stated, turning her back on the Witch and continued collecting her food and other supplies. "That damned Kantos bastard! Who the _fuck_ does he think he is, anyway? He nearly got the drop on me. Twice! That thrice-damned voice of his. What did you do that pissed him off so much that he wants to destroy you so badly?"

She turned back around but the witch was gone. Snorting derisively, she faced front again, and jumped when she saw the unarmed woman standing less than five feet from her.

"I was his Teacher," Cassandra explained to Emma.

"Bang up job. Glad I still haven't fallen into that trap. Advantage of knowing a pair of Scottish do-gooders and a couple of saints," she said, referring to Rachel and Darius, both of whom had gladly taken in any new Immortals that she'd come across over the years.

"The reason that I've been looking for you, Emma the Forester," Cassandra said, "also known as Emma Darling, Emma Pevensie, Emma Wonders, Emma Cygnus, Emma Cygnet, and Emma Swan. Is because I want to become _your_ Teacher. I have foreseen it."

"So you've done your homework," Emma snapped, glowering as she walked around the icy-eyed woman. "Give me one good reason I should bother with you? Way I see it, as badly as I'm hunted just by there being _rumors_ of you looking for me, how bad will it be when word gets around that I'm actually your Student? Huh?"

"I can give you more than one reason," Cassandra told her. "My name is Cassandra. I am over four thousand years old, and what I taught Kantos pales in comparison to what I can teach you, and what you are truly capable of. I have also foreseen something else, something that will change your mind immediately and forever change the course of your life afterward."

"And what might that be?" she huffed, turning to face the older Immortal in frustration.

"You will one day meet your parents."

The world stopped, crumbled, and began to crash, falling apart and destroying everything that it had been before. Emma dropped everything that she was carrying and reached for her sword, drawing it and putting it to Cassandra's throat in a flash. Tears pooled in her eyes as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. Choked up, she accused the Immortal Witch with something she already knew wasn't possible.

"Liar! You lie! I'm an Immortal! We don't _have_ parents! We are foundlings, every last one of us! And I can tell that you are lying! I always know when people lie!" she cried.

"What you say is true, for the most part," Cassandra said as gently as she was able. "You are an Immortal. Immortals are foundlings. You know when people lie. Look at me very closely, Emma. You will one day meet your parents."

Emma's sword dropped in shock. Then it was back up, an angry look in her eyes. "Just because you believe it does not make it true!"

"Then believe this," Cassandra smirked, before intoning, " _Drop your sword, Emma. It is getting heavy, heavier than the weight of the truth you now know. Drop your sword._ "

The sword dropped, but she kept her grip on it through sheer stubbornness. She'd faced this with Kantos, and surprised him with just how strong-willed she was and how long she'd held out against him. The last time, she'd actually managed to escape him thanks to a cliff and a nearby river. Cassandra's _voice_ was different though. More subtle, gentler, and more effective because of it.

"Don't ever do that again," Emma growled, eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Wouldn't you like to learn how to do it yourself?" Cassandra asked 'innocently'.

"No," the blond answered immediately. "I've felt that, I know what it is like, and even if I never hurt people with it like Kantos, I'd never willingly use that on another person. No matter what."

"There are many things that you'll find yourself doing, Emma," she warned her new student. "Things that are unimaginable to you as you are now. I seek to expand your horizons. You have a destiny, Emma. And I am a part of that destiny. Whether you accept that or not."

"Does anyone else know that I'm here?" she asked, sheathing her sword and picking up her supplies. "Were you followed?"

"I had a vision of where you'd be and left immediately," she answered. "The moment that my ship was closest to you, I jumped overboard and swam ashore and then walked here. If anyone followed me, they'll be at the docks with the ship, on the other side of the continent."

"But they'll be on this continent," Emma sneered. "I'd hoped to have another decade or two. Come on, _Teacher_ , let me introduce you to the tribe. Always have an escape route, and always have a backup plan to every step of whatever plan you put in place. Learned that the hard way, dealing with criminal scum and worse."

"And what is your plan for when I inevitably caught up to you?" Cassandra inquired, keeping easy pace, still barefoot and wearing only her white dress, while Emma was equipped as a typical European Settler, boots, trousers, shirt, vest, and jacket.

"I have a canoe," Emma told her. "Up north. We're going to use it to get to Indonesia and traverse the archipelago and get lost for those few decades that I wanted to remain lost. After that… we'll see."

"I'm somewhat surprised," Cassandra admitted. "I expected you to need more convincing to allow me to become your Teacher."

"You've been 'looking' for me for over a decade. I've been running from you for seven years now, the last five of which here in the Outback. You found me and I didn't see you coming until you were right in front of me. If _you_ found me, Kantos isn't too far behind. And chances are, he's actually following you, somehow. So rather than run from both of you, might as well keep the rat bastard from catching either one of us. Doesn't mean I want to learn that control thing you and he do, just means that I acknowledge you have things to teach me. Even if it is just how to counter those tricks so I can kill the bastard."

"You won't be the one to kill him," Cassandra explained. "There is a prophecy. The one who will defeat him has already been chosen. It is just a matter of time now. There is a prophecy about you as well, though the details of which I know not. It has nothing to do with Kantos though, I can assure you of that at least."

"I'm all ears, Cassie," Emma drawled.

 _Fifty Years Later_

The War, people were starting to call it 'World War II' already, had spread down into Africa. That was far enough that not even the Forester could ignore it any longer.

The first War, the Great War, World War I, she'd stayed out of it by going into the black heart of Africa and honing her skills. Before that, she and Cassandra had spent some thirty years, give or take, amongst the archipelagos of Southeast Asia, and even spent a couple years in the monastery's of the Himaleyas and China. As women, they were segregated against from the other monks, but in seeking what they sought, they were permitted to learn, though in isolation from all others at the temple.

Cassandra taught Emma magic. She learned the Voice trick, though she never used it. She also discovered that she had abilities that Cassandra did not, and slowly over the years learned to master them. She learned martial arts and various other skills from the Shaolin, Bhuddists, and a number of other disciplines hidden throughout that part of the world. She was a Kung Fu master, though not Shaolin. She also knew Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Jiu Jitsu, Karate, and Muay Thai. Though Qi Gong had mostly just helped her develop her body and learn a few healing techniques rather than fighting as the others had.

Once Cassandra had been assured that Emma had learned all she could from her, they parted ways. Cassandra heading back toward Europe, to throw the trail off Emma (Kantos was still following them), while the blond went to Africa. There, she lost herself in the forests there and honed her skills.

A few Immortals found her. Some, she befriended, quite a few Challenged her. She disabled and humiliated the ones that were just doing what they'd been told to do, the ones that she could see didn't really want to fight or kill. A couple of those kept trying and a very odd friendship was formed with them. Others learned their lesson quickly and did their best to avoid the 'She-Devil of Africa'. There were some though, truly evil to the core, and she racked up quite a head-count over the years.

By the beginning of the second War, with the Nazi war machine spreading pretty much all over, there were stories, some rumor, most fictional and sold for entertainment value, of a blond blue-eyed white jungle woman roaming the forests of Africa, saving the innocent, hunting evil and defending the animals and trees of the forest from all that would harm or abuse them. They never got her name right, but Emma often laughed at some of the 'comic books' that were coming out that were basically her. Not that she went around in a tiny leather top and loincloth, or did even a tenth of the things that the stories said she did, but it was amusing nevertheless.

The War changed things, however.

Seeing that she needed to rejoin the world, Emma went north and enlisted. Given her appearance and the 'image' that Hitler and his Nazi's were promoting, she went with German defector rather than return to England or America to just turn right back around. It was an experience that she would never forget and never allow herself to forget.

She saw, met, encountered, fought, and befriended more Immortals during that decade of hell than she'd ever known had existed before. Aside from her 'extended family', she met over thirty other Immortals in the hospital unit she was a part of. Mostly as 'patients' though some were just passing through. Given that everyone had much larger concerns to deal with, she never had any trouble with Challenges or Headhunters. Even those idiots knew that it wouldn't be a good idea to reveal the existence of Immortals in this kind of environment. Especially not with rumors of Hitler's insanity and obsession with the occult. And everybody wanted 'super soldiers'. How much more 'super' can you get than soldiers that cannot die?

And then the Americans started their invasion. D-Day they called it afterward.

At that point, she'd moved further north into the conflict, and eventually made it to France. She found Darius, still guarding his church and helping people where and how he could.

"Hello Emma," Darius said as he met her at the gate to his church.

"Allo Darius," Emma returned the greeting in her mostly-faked French-English accent. Over time, she'd picked up numerous languages, but English had been her first, and while her original accent was Proper English, and then Aussie English, and then 'European' English, now her tones and dialect and inflections were approaching what was known as American accent English. "How are you?"

"I think the question is," Darius smiled, seeming to look right through her, "how are you? You've looked… better, my child. Has this time of strife truly taken such a toll on you?"

"Most don't see what I see out there, Darius," she confessed, walking through the gates and giving him a hug. She'd never been one of his… disciples, but they remained friends and she'd learned much from him. She hoped to learn more now. It was why she was here.

"I've been in this since it's second year, and in that time since, I've seen… so much death, Darius," Emma told him, walking with him into the stone building. "Immortality can be cruel. Watching innocents, people that held so much… potential for life and in this world, being slaughtered like that. Dying so… so young!" She sobbed.

He held her as the grief poured out of her. Eventually the tears subsided, but he continued to hold and rock her, as though she were his very own daughter. She pulled away, just slightly, enough to tell him that she was ready to continue. He let her, though he kept one arm across her shoulder, added support. Emma took a deep, trembling breath and wiped her eyes.

"You know, part of me is envious," she admitted. "Wishing that I was like them. Because at least those that were with me at the camps, that helped and provided relief and saw what I saw, at least they're mortal. They'll only have the nightmares for what? Another fifty or sixty years at the most? Then they'll die and be at peace. I won't have that."

"No, you won't," Darius told her straight. No bull shit. She laughed.

"I'm going back to America after this," she told him. "I need to… get away from… all this death. And at least they're willing to help, they actually care."

"At least this generation does," he wisely pointed out.

"Then maybe I'll come back at some point, when they've stopped caring and don't help," she shrugged. "I need to go back to my home forest for a while."

"Your name Forester is well deserved, Emma," Darius said with a gentle smile. "You care about all living things and protect the land and the people all at once. A savior in the making."

"Stop," she blushed, still sniffling a little bit. "I'm not Duncan. He can't help but get involved. I heard he was there when they finally killed that bastard. I can't imagine being on the front lines all the time like he is. I prefer to help and to heal, if I can."

"And the old stories of the She-Devil Jungle Woman?" he teased.

"Shut up!" she shoved him away.

"When do you leave?" he asked after they'd had their laugh.

"Not for a few months," she told him honestly. "I need to clear up some business, tie up loose ends, and then by the time that is finished, I'd imagine there will be a lot of immigrants to America after this. I'll be on a ship amidst thousands of people just like me, nobody will even notice until long after."

"Always knew how to disappear, Miss Swan," he laughed. "Will you keep the name, or come up with a new one?"

"Swan has grown on me. And I have no connections to the others I've had in the past. Not anymore. I have a ship to London this afternoon. Goodbye, Darius. I'll see you again sometime."

"I'm sure you will," he stood and they hugged goodbye.

It was the last time they ever saw one another.

 _Fifty-Five Years Later_

(AN: Spoilers for Season 2 Episode 6)

It was spring of 2001. Times had been tough. For Emma Swan as much as any. The Y2K scare was finally over with, not that she'd been all that scared. She'd fucking lived in the dark heart of Africa for over twenty years, she could handle whatever would happen if all the world's computers suddenly crashed. Didn't change the fact that in the past decade alone she'd taken hundreds of heads, none of them by choice.

On top of that, new laws regarding bounty hunting came into effect and she found herself needing more of an 'identity' than what had worked previously, and all her years alone and isolated hadn't helped her in that regard. After World War II, she'd done as she'd told Darius and gone to America. She'd started up a bounty hunting firm, in her old stomping grounds even. During the 50's she actually did pretty well, managed to stay under the radar during those Soviet witch hunts, and even managed to make enough money to make investments, planning for the future.

The 60's were… interesting. For Emma at least. She was dragged into the Women's Lib movement, but stayed on the fringes. Still got her arrested a couple times and she put her thieving skills to use by getting and destroying her police records. It did mean having to move out of state, however. So she tried Florida, Tallahassee to be specific, for the latter half of the 60's. Watched all the rockets the US were sending up. Wasn't anywhere near Texas, but was saddened like the rest of the world by the President's assassination.

In the 70's, most of her investments didn't pan out with Vietnam going on, and the few that did wouldn't let her touch anything for a good while. So, deciding to educate herself, she went to school. College to be specific; Harvard.

It took her selling some antiquities that she'd "inherited from a relative", and thankfully Conner was able to help her out with that. But she managed to afford her degrees. Which was actually pretty much every degree that Harvard offered. Didn't even have to change her name, just make sure they never put her photo id in with her file. It put her smack dab in the middle of the (Hippie movement), but she made sure to stay away from the drugs and 'mind-altering' experiences. She had enough of that, thank you very much White Rabbit and Cassandra. Still took her over a decade to go from Freshman to Full Honors Master Degree on Every Degree Graduate. It was 1983 when she stopped going to Harvard, and rather than go back to bounty hunting, she decided to go with the flow and headed out West, to Hollywood and tried to 'make it big' in the movies. Thankfully she never got any actual parts, as she didn't know what she'd do if she actually wound up in a movie, her face and image preserved for all time where millions of people could recognize her, even decades, possibly centuries after the fact.

Instead she became something of a talent scout, the Hollywood answer to a bounty hunter. She got pretty good at it too. Until she found out that the producers and film companies she was finding this 'young talent' for was turning them into drug addicts. Then there was a little… incident with the Los Angeles Police and she went into hiding again. For about a day, and then she turned around and started using her accumulated skills for more than just running away from the world and investigated the 'crime' that she'd been accused of. Found the truth, and used her Harvard Law Degree to full effect and got herself acquitted and turned things around on the real criminals, plus the negligent cops that had been chasing her the whole time. Either way, by the time the Wall fell in 89, she was done with Hollywood.

She started moving up the West Coast. Met all the computer guys of the early 90's in Silicon Valley, made sure to invest with each of them. Started wearing thick rimmed glasses and dressing up like a secretary. In business meetings, people always underestimated her and thought she was a secretary for the 'Swan Trust'. At several points she encouraged this with several individuals, making it seem like she was a reclusive, eccentric old money millionaire philanthropist. Then things started happening in Africa.

And that is where her luck turned for the worst.

There were plenty of white-skinned blue-eyed blonds roaming around the continent now, so any attempt at reintroducing her 'identity' as the White She-Devil Jungle Woman wasn't going to fly. So she turned her Swan Trust toward helping on the political and financial front. By 1999, she was broke and had to smuggle herself out of Africa and back to the states. Turns out she just missed visiting Duncan, who'd gone back to his barge in France when she went to visit his address in Seattle.

And now here she was, in Portland, Oregon. She'd decided to start over. Doing what, as who, she couldn't begin to imagine. And then quickly realized that by being out of money, meant she couldn't pay for things like a place to stay, food, or… renewing her bounty hunting license. Good thing she had… other skills to fall back on.

She'd never been much of a car thief. Amanda's lessons tended more toward jewelry, and priceless antiquities held in museums and the like. Didn't mean she didn't know how to do it though.

Walking along with a locker key, like it was the car keys to the yellow Volkswagon Beetle she was walking towards, she made sure that she wasn't being watched. She'd 'updated' her secretary look to more of a schoolgirl look, keeping her hair back in a ponytail. The thick rimmed glasses kept people underestimating her, and that was better than the alternative, especially against other Immortals. Now she was in black heel-boots, black stockings, a plaid mini-dress and a black leather jacket.

Looking the car over, even as she jimmied the lock, she figured she could get a pretty decent price for it. More if she took it to a chop shop. Thing is, she was actually looking to skip town, maybe head back East, and of all the cars that get pulled over for any number of reasons, old style 'Bugs' were very close to the bottom of that list.

Jumping in quick, she closed the door and pulled a flathead screwdriver and a heavy rock. A couple hits was all it took to get the metal in far enough and she had the little motor running moments later. She pulled out of the alley the little yellow car had been parked in and out onto the road.

"Impressive," a male voice said from right behind her.

She screamed, well, gasped in surprise while restraining her screams. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a man, somewhere in his early to mid-twenties based on appearance. He was dressed in an olive hoodie and a brown t-shirt and sweatpants. She was driving down the road, so she didn't exactly take the time to look him over in detail, but from the little she'd glimpsed… it looked like he'd been sleeping back there. She was still a bit too scared out of her wits to care at the moment.

"But really, you could've just asked me for the keys," he grinned boyishly at her, holding up the mentioned keys.

She shot him another look, and then turned her attention back to the road, trying to get her heart rate under control. He was still grinning at her. Weirdo.

"Just drive, it's fine," he said, misinterpreting the look she'd been giving him.

"I just stole your car," she pointed out. "Your life could be in danger."

"Neal Cassidy," he introduced himself.

"I am not telling you my name," she snapped at him.

"I don't need it when the robbery is in progress," he laughed. She rolled her eyes at him.

"Emma. Swan."

"Good name."

"So, do you just live in here or are you just waiting for the car to be stolen?" she asked, curious as to whether he really was just a weirdo, or she'd been set up.

"Why don't I tell you over drinks?" he flirted.

Turning to glare at him, giving her pony tail an extra flip to it, she said to him, "Excuse me?!"

"Hey! Eyes on the road!" he called, pointing.

Turning back she only just caught sight of the fact that she'd just run a stop sign. Thankfully no one had been in her way or was hurt, though a few honked their horns at her.

Calming herself down and paying closer attention to her driving, she told him in no uncertain terms, "I am not having drinks with you! You might be a pervert."

"I might be a pervert," he agreed, "but you're _definitely_ a car thief."

"I said I was sorry!" she protested.

"You didn't actually," he corrected her.

Before the conversation could go much further, their attention was brought jarringly back to reality as a police cruiser came up behind them, lights and siren blaring. They both groaned in dismay.

"Oh…"

"Damnit!" Emma cursed.

"That's why I said eyes on the road," Neal groaned, covering his eyes.

Knowing better than to try and outrace a 2000 Dodge Charger Police Cruiser in a 1987 VW Beetle, Emma pulled over to the side of the road.

"Screwdriver," Neal warned, helping her hide the evidence of her theft-in-progress.

"License and Registration please," the officer requested as he came up to the driver's side.

Before Emma could actually say anything though, Neal jumped forward from the back seat and leaned over to look the officer in the eye. "Hi-"

"Terribly sorry officer," he said in a rush. "This is actually my car. I'm trying to, uh, teach my girlfriend, uh, how to drive stick."

"Still a lot to learn," the officer stated, looking back at the intersection where Emma had run the stop sign.

"I know," Neal said, nodding in agreement. "But, you know, _women_."

Emma turned and glared anew at her unintended passenger, silently vowing to make him pay for that comment at some point. Neal just grimaced, keeping his eyes locked with the officer, not daring to even glance at the pretty blond he was leaning across at the moment.

"Yeah, I hear ya," the police officer grunted. "It's a warning! This time!"

"Yeah! Thank you so much!" Neal gushed as the man walked back to his cruiser.

"What are you, some sort of misogynist?" Emma asked as he briefly stepped out so he could properly move to the front seat with her.

"You're welcome," he remarked sarcastically. "Go, we got lucky."

Emma stopped, alarm bells ringing in her head. She turned to face him and repeated, "We?"

He just looked back at her, meeting her gaze for but a few moments. "This isn't your car either, is it?" she asked, suspicious.

"Huh?" he put on an innocent expression she was all too familiar with.

"I stole a stolen car?" she asked him, a little bit of awe in her tone.

He just grinned that boyish grin of his at her again and said, "Now, how about that drink?"

She just shook her head and started the car up again. It had been a while since she'd last met a mortal that made her feel… young again. Maybe she would let him buy her that drink. It was the _least_ he could do for that women-comment from before.

 _Ten Years (and a few months) Later_

Emma got up from blowing out the single candle she'd put on the cupcake. It was her two-hundred and twenty-eighth birthday tonight. And she was alone.

Amanda was… somewhere. Duncan was off on a quest with several others in Europe somewhere. Cassandra had vanished from the face of the earth. Darius was dead. Rachel was dead. Fitz was dead. Conner was dead. And the man that she'd fallen in love with and had given her something… absolutely impossible, had sent her to prison and disappeared from all traces.

So she'd made a wish on the little blue star candle she'd put into a gourmet cupcake she'd bought on her way in from a job that had left a sour taste in her mouth.

And now someone was ringing her doorbell.

She answered it, sensing no Immortals nearby, and was surprised to see a ten-year-old boy with brown hair and… a boyish grin, looking up at her. He was dressed in a school uniform of some sort and had a backpack on. "Uh, can I help you?"

"Are you Emma Swan?" he asked.

"Yeah, who are you?" she asked back.

"My name is Henry," he answered, looking her in the eye. "I'm your son."

END _Prologue_


	2. Chapter 1 Divergence

Title: The Forester

Author: Joshua

Disclaimer: Don't own 'Once Upon A Time' or any of its characters. Don't own Highlander, any of its characters, nor the concept of 'Immortals' and the Game. References to the mini-series "Highlander: The Source", but no actual spoiling. Well, maybe the 'epilogue'.

Summary: Highlander/Once Upon A Time crossover. What if the origin of Immortals was even more complicated than either "Highlander 2" or "The Source" ever hinted at? Baby Emma came through during the time period when 'Grimms Fairy Tales' were actually being told and written, and then she died, was killed… and revived as an Immortal.

Premise: Because she's magical and from 'another world', but mostly because she's a foundling, Emma fits the bill of a pre-Immortal just fine. Switch things up a bit so that she comes across in the early 1800's, when Fairy Tales were first being published and spread more effectively. Also, set it up so that her death occurs on her 28th birthday and exactly 200 years later she comes across Storybrooke. Maybe have her Teacher be Duncan, or Amanda. Neal is still Baelfire and trapped in Neverland until the late 80's. For… whatever reason, Storybrooke still appears at the same time and same everything as canon states. Call it 'time differential between worlds' or whatever. It happened with the Rabbit in 'Wonderland', it can happen here with the Tree/Cupboard baby Emma was sent through. Emma uses same style of sword that her father uses and therefore that 'she' uses in canon. Henry is Emma's natural born biological child, and a pre-Immortal. She's not explaining why or how.

"Forester" - A person in charge of a forest or skilled in planting, managing, or caring for trees. A person, or animal, living in a forest. Someone whose origin can be traced back to the Enchanted Forest.

Chapter One: _Divergence_

Henry had been poisoned. Worse than that, instead of killing him, slow or fast, it was putting him into an eternal slumber, a coma. And it had been done with _magic_. Her child, her own flesh and blood, something that for all of her very, very long life she had thought absolutely impossible, was going to spend eternity in a coma. It wasn't fair. She'd just gotten him back, was back in his life and was getting to know him. And yes, she'd told him that she was leaving, just for a little while anyway.

The feuding between her and his adopted mother had gotten way out of hand and he was getting hurt in the crossfire. But it had been her telling him that, and showing off Regina's 'going away gift', that had him eating the cursed apple turnover in the first place.

And that is where everything changed.

She'd taken him to the hospital, of course. She was Immortal, but he wasn't and she wasn't about to… curse him with the body of a child for the rest of eternity. It was how she knew he was hers from the start. He was… what was it Duncan had called it that one time? Pre-Immortal? And the blood and genetic maternity tests she had run 'under the radar' out of town hadn't hurt either.

At the hospital, she'd grabbed Henry's book, desperate for anything, open to all possibilities. And that is when her first memories were shown to her all over again. Of being born to Snow White, being in her mother's arms for but moments before going with her father to the wardrobe, fighting every step of the way, and then being placed inside and the door shutting. Of course that is when Regina walked in and she instantly knew that it was all true.

Sure, she'd known since she was 18 that she was from another realm and magic and all that was real. She was also from the time when fairy tales were being written down and she'd seen what Alice's books of her time spent in Wonderland had been turned into over the years. It was a laughable parody at certain points, and certainly cut down on just how terrifyingly scary things had been, mostly for the kids sake she assumed. So while she was certainly open to the _possibility_ of fairy tales having been real, _her_ being the daughter of Snow White, not to mention all the others being cursed to live ordinary lives in another world, it was… it was impossible! Especially given the fact that it was a couple hundred years ago! They'd all either have to be Immortal already, or dead by this point.

But after touching that book, she knew that it wasn't just possible, it was the truth. She didn't know _how_ it came to be, but it had happened. Despite the fact that not a single person in the entire town was Immortal, all these people had to be over two hundred years old.

She confronted Regina, damn near killed her in fact, but calmed down enough that she could accept that she needed the woman's help if they were to save their son. They'd gone to the local crime boss, aka Mr. Gold, aka Rumplestiltskin. Then she'd had to fight a dragon. And now… and now they were back at the hospital, empty handed, and it was starting to look like Henry's organs were failing, meaning he'd have to be on life support for the rest of his life. She was just about to order that done, but first she had to apologize to him for the pain she'd be putting him through. At least for the next eight to ten years. Then she would kill him herself and hopefully by triggering his immortality it would wake him up. She needn't have bothered.

"I love you, Henry," she whispered and kissed him on the forehead, tears in her eyes.

The moment her lips made contact with his skin, a feeling-extremely similar to that of a Quickening, minus the pain-shot through her and she could feel it blasting out and away from them. The moment after that, Henry sat up with a gasp… in a disturbingly familiar manner, and said, "I love you too. You saved me!"

"You did it," Regina gasped, leaning forward to make sure that Henry was all right.

After that, things kind of spiraled for a while, what with everybody remembering and stuff and wanting to thank her as she and Henry made their way out of the hospital. Then she'd reunited with her parents. She wasn't going to lie, that was awkward. She was over two hundred years old for crying out loud, and they were overjoyed at being reunited with their _baby_ girl! Still… it was nice.

Of course that was after a giant cloud of purple smoke covered the entire town, as before that, Gold had done something with that stupid egg she'd gotten from the dragon and "brought magic back" according to everyone she talked to. And she could feel it. Oh boy could she feel it. Cassandra had taught her magic, how to tap into her inner power and utilize it to exercise her will on the world around her, how to use it for a variety of things. The moment that cloud had passed, her inner power felt like it had tapped into a hydro-electric dam-or an unending Quickening-amount of power. It was a heady experience.

Oh, and can't forget that immediately after her reunion with her parents, she had to go and stop a mob from lynching the mayor.

She got there just as Whale was closing in, looking ready to strangle her. Regina on the other hand, had an almost resolved look in her eyes. Oh, there was fear, but that wasn't the predominant emotion. Emma rushed through the crowd, shouting, "Let her go!"

The blond savior physically placed herself between the mob and their target.

Whale staggered back from the shove he'd gotten and retorted, "Why should I listen to you?"

"Because I'm still the sheriff!" Emma snapped at him.

"And because she saved you," David shouted. He and the rest had followed her, but were still amidst the crowd, Henry between him and Snow. "All of you!"

"And because no matter what Regina did, it does not justify this," said Snow, formerly her roommate Mary Margaret Blanchard. That was changing. Sure, they were her parents, but no way was she living with her parents at the age of two hundred and twenty eight, (a couple months from two hundred and twenty nine)!

"We are not murderers here!" Emma added to that.

"Well we're not from this world," Whale retorted.

"Yeah, well, you're in it now," she said.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw David move, probably about to do something macho and heroic and chivalrous. Not that it wouldn't be appreciated, but she knew a way to resolve this immediately with no long term consequences. Putting her hand in front of his chest to keep him from shoving Whale again, Emma took a step forward and tapped into her 'inner power'. Heaven above, it was like channeling the power of the Quickening! But at least it responded just the same as it always had.

Ever since the birth and… loss of her child, Emma's priorities had shifted a bit, and her morality likewise become skewed. She didn't mind using the Voice anymore.

" _Everyone here, you are no longer angry. Your rage disappears like the morning fog. The Evil Queen has been defeated, and you have no strength to face her. No anger. No rage. Feel peace settling upon you like a blanket. Calm. Peace. Forgiveness. Peace. Leave here now and forget your anger. Go in peace._ "

The longer she spoke, the more and more Emma was amazed at what this magic was doing for her. The longest she'd ever been able to use the Voice without resting was about thirty seconds, or three short sentences in other words. Cassandra could, theoretically keep it going for longer, but not much. The bastard that Duncan had finally killed, according to prophecy, had used the talent extensively and even he exhausted himself after barely a minute of use, in brief bursts at that. She actually felt herself being energized as her power was being used. It was amazing.

After she'd finished her little speech, the crowd slowly began to disperse until it was just her, Regina, her family and their friends. Once the last of the mob had left, Regina first and then the others one by one seemed to come out of a trance.

"What… what was that?" the mayor (until thrown out of office) demanded.

"Yeah, about that," Emma said sheepishly turning to face them, "Let's go inside real quick. This is going to take a while and better in comfortable settings then down at the precinct. Trust me, we're going to want to keep this quiet, friends and family only."

Seeing no point in arguing, especially as Henry was there and it was his home too, Regina just sighed and opened her door for the crowd of heroes to walk in. Though she shot the dwarf, Grumpy, a dirty look and warned him off of making a mess in her home.

"What is this about, Miss Swan?" Regina began by taking control of the conversation, standing at the center with her hands on her hips, doing her best to act and look like the queen she was.

"Something… very complicated," Emma sighed, rubbing her face as she tried to put her thoughts in order. She'd only done this a few times, and even then it had been with people that had already known about Immortals, mostly Duncan's friends, or the new Immortals she'd met and sent on to Darius and Rachel, and later Duncan and Methos. " _Very_ complicated."

"Well, I don't have time for…" the Evil Queen started to say, but was interrupted.

" _Silence,_ " Emma lashed out with the Voice, quiet falling across all of them.

"Just… let me think for a minute here, OK?" she asked them all, pacing around the circle they'd subconsciously formed around the Evil Queen, Emma now between them and her.

"I'm usually a lot better at this sort of thing, but it's been a busy couple of days, OK?" she said, mostly speaking to herself, but using her audience to full advantage. "I mean, let's review, shall we? Yesterday, and hard to believe it was only yesterday, I came here, to Regina, to tell her I was leaving town, that I was tired of putting Henry between us and I needed to bury the hatchet. After all, I only had to wait until he was eighteen, not even a full decade, and then he could come find me and I could be sure that he grew up as normally as possible. Then she gives me a poisoned, sorry, _cursed_ apple turnover, which he eats and falls into a coma before my eyes. Finally have my eyes opened when confronted with the truth, oh, and wasn't _that_ a fun confrontation." She stopped right in front of Regina, her blue/green eyes shining with emotion.

"Moving on, not even noon yet, and didn't exactly have a full breakfast, as Henry ate mine," she shot one final glare at Regina before resuming her pacing. "We head off to see Mr. Gold, aka _Rumplestiltskin_! I mean, seriously?! Rumplestiltskin? Was Humpty Dumpty and Mother Goose not available? Why not Voldemort, or Jafar, or any of the characters voiced by Tim Curry over the past twenty years?! Anyway, we go to the wizard, get our quest, oh, and low and behold it's a scene straight out of my favorite book, where I have to get a golden egg from a dragon! Then, Gold double-crosses us, no big shocker there, and the hospital calls because Henry is dying. Now, here," she started laughing a bit manically, " _here_ is where things really get weird for me. Yeah, where they _start_ to get weird. Not where I have a memory flash of who my parents are, not where I fought and killed a dragon, but where I am in tears and kissing my only son goodbye, telling him that I love him. And I break the curse."

She stops and just stands there, staring at nothing and no one for the longest time, at least it feels that way to those that have been magically silenced.

Finally breaking out of whatever memory she was in, she turned to face them all and said, "Screw it. Henry, you're my son. Mary Margaret, you're my best friend, and I trust you, no matter what else we may be to each other, you are my friend. Regina… I like you. I have no idea why, but I like you and I respect you and I even sometimes think of you as a kind of friendly rival. The past twenty-four hours included, we've always had the same goal and the same outlook on life, we just made different choices."

She sighed, and continued, making her way around the circle. "David. Apparently you're my dad. Good luck with that. Ruby, you are my friend and a very close slot to where Mary Margaret stands, and very well may end up being my best friend after finding out she's my mother. Granny, you live up to your name, and I hope you'll keep the diner open. You guys… are my mom's friends, not mine. Leroy, can't stand you, so I like you all, but get the hell out, I don't trust you with this."

"Hey, look here sister…" Leroy/Grumpy started to say then stopped when he and everyone else realized that he could suddenly speak, meaning they all could.

"Out, now," Emma pointed to the door. "I am dead serious and maybe someday, but not after the day I've had already. Archie… Yeah, OK, you can stay for this."

"The cricket gets to stay?!" the generally-angry dwarf erupted.

"He knows how to be discreet, and according to Henry, he's a conscience, so…" she shrugged as though that answered everything. And it kinda did.

"May I say something now?" Regina spoke, her arms crossed and her gaze dark.

"Not yet," Emma made a motion with her hands that most would interpret as 'zipped lips'. "Dwarves, out. Anybody that feels like they will at some point betray my trust, out. Regina, Mary Margaret, David, Henry, Ruby, Granny and Archie, stay."

"You're trusting Regina?!" Snow exclaimed, shocked disbelief coloring her tone.

"With this? Yes," Emma answered.

"Why?"

It was the question on everyone's minds at that moment, none moreso than the Immortal's immediate family, and yet it was the Evil Queen herself that posed the query aloud. That seemed to startle the slackers enough that they hurried out the door before they could be drawn back into the situation.

The moment the door was slammed shut, the blond savior took a deep breath and prepared herself as much as she could.

"OK, no easy way to go into this, so I'll just say it," Emma said, stuffing her hands into her jean pockets. "I'm Immortal. I've been alive since the late seventeen hundreds, I first died in 1811, and then I revived. I haven't aged a day since and I cannot die. In that time, I've learned many skills. Some of which you probably call magic. Which is what I used out there on the crowd. Oh yeah, I can use magic."

"You can use magic?!" half of them yelled.

"You're immortal?" Regina said, clearly disbelieving.

Sighing, Emma reached into the folds of her red jacket and pulled out her sword, an English longsword, very similar in fact to the one her father now wielded. Considering the size of the jacket and the size and shape of the sword, there was no feasible means of the bit of red leather properly covering the weapon, not without everyone seeing what was beneath it at any rate. They all gasped at the sight, especially those that had shouted.

"You can use magic," Snow said as confirmation, sounding like she might faint.

"Yeah, Kid, might want to cover your eyes for this one," she warned, and then drew the sharp blade across her palm, all the way to the bone. She hissed in pain and they all gasped at the blood that came pouring out, but she held them back and might have even used a bit of the Voice when she told them to, "Watch the wound."

Within seconds, the blood flow had slowed. Inside of a minute, they could all see that her tissue was indeed regenerating, sparks of power flowing between the gaps in flesh. After two minutes, her skin was raw and red and still had a couple sparks playing across her flesh, but for all intents and purposes, her hand was fully healed, no damage at all. The only sign of the injury was all the blood that she was even now wiping off her hands.

"Immortal," she said again, putting away her cleaned sword.

"But… the wardrobe was just supposed to send you here so you wouldn't be cursed," Snow said, shaking her head. "It was supposed to give you your best chance."

Emma shook her head and looked down at her feet.

"You sent me here alone, or near enough," she said. "What chance did I have? If Amanda hadn't been passing through the area, by mere coincidence, I would've been left alone in the woods for who knows how long?"

"But... you're immortal?" Regina remarked, looking as close to panic as any had ever seen her… since she became the Evil Queen that is.

She scowled, and decided she may as well reveal another secret. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

"An Immortal only becomes immortal when they die, most often a violent death," she told them. "And before you ask, I actually died when I was twenty-eight years old, on my birthday ironically enough. I was killed by an escaped convict that I was hunting. Killed him at the same time, got the bounty, but he still got me in the gut with a damn fishing knife!"

It was still a sore subject, even after all these years.

"You… died?" Snow was in tears by now.

Emma just nodded.

"You… killed someone?" Henry asked, in nearly the same state.

Now that hurt. That hurt a lot. But she had to face up to it, and despite everything that had happened since then, her intention had been to protect her son by leaving. Protecting him from the truth, from what she had done, what she was, that no longer seemed to be an option. Leaving, quite obviously, still was. She looked him right in the eye and told him the truth. "Yes."

"But… you're a hero! You're the Savior!" he insisted.

"I'm an Immortal," she countered, saying more than anyone presently there could possibly understand at the time.

"What is that supposed to mean, Emma?" Snow asked, sensing that there was indeed more being said here.

Closing her eyes in almost visible pain, she opened them and began to speak. No one dared to interrupt, not even Henry or Regina, despite how unbelievable her words were.

"For centuries, Immortals, and there are more of us than just me, have played the Game. The Game is anything but. We fight each other, one on one, in a duel to the death, where the victor… the survivor, takes the other Immortal's power in what we call the Quickening. Only an Immortal can kill another Immortal. We live and fight and kill until the time of the Gathering, where all the Immortals left will be drawn to a single spot to finish the Game once and for all. Rumors have circulated the last few years that perhaps the Gathering has already come and gone, but there are still hundreds of us, many centuries old by now, still out there, alive and fighting and killing. For the record," she stopped and looked each of them in the eye, coming to rest on Henry's, "I have taken one hundred and twenty eight Quickenings, the last in the afternoon of the day Henry-that you came to get me at my apartment and brought me to Storybrooke, nearly a year ago."

"How quaint," Regina said with a sneer. "You kept count and even managed to make an anniversary event of it, did we dear? As bad as I ever was, at least I was never so callous…"

" _Excuse me_?!" Snow interrupted the Evil Queen's banter. "While you may not have been there at every execution or done it with your own hands, your body count is _much_ higher, Regina! So do not dare to compare your actions, made by choice, to anything that my daughter had to do to survive!"

Emma blinked, taken aback by the defense. She wasn't the only one.

"Is it… were they all bad guys?" Henry asked, grasping for anything to keep the image of his hero intact.

Emma grimaced and looked down. "Most," she said, "but not all. I only ever defended myself, I never sought out confrontation, I never… I never sought revenge. Didn't stop them from attacking me, and well, let's just say that even with a year off, I'm still the deadliest person with a sword in the room at the moment."

"Oh, I may have a thing or two to teach you," David, her dad, remarked with a cocky smirk.

"Two hundred years old here," she said incredulously.

"As good as you are with a sword, how good are you with magic, my dear?" Regina sneered, stepping back from them, her hands open claws at her sides. She glared at them when nothing else happened.

Emma shrugged, and recalled the spell for summoning fire, something she'd only ever used to spark a campfire when no flint or matches were available. Instantly she had a single candle flame burning at the center of her palm. She could feel the drain, but more than that she could feel the energy being refilled almost before any actual loss could be felt. She poured more energy into it and soon had a burning fireball about the size of a basketball in the palm of her hand.

"I'd say… decent, just shy of pretty good," Emma shrugged after everyone had a moment or two to appreciate her skill and power.

"Wow," Henry said, in awe as he observed real magic. "Can you teach me?"

Emma closed her fist and cut off the flow of magic fueling the spell, extinguishing the fireball. Silently, she observed her son, using every sense and skill she'd gained over her centuries at life, eventually coming to the conclusion that if she could do this much on her own with only rudimentary and unpracticed skills, in an environment with zero magic, then he could definitely match her.

"When you're older," she told him. " _Much_ older."

"And what say do you think you still have, Miss Swan?" Regina snarled. "Curse or no curse, we're still here. This changes nothing, and according to the laws of this land, which you professed to adhering to out there, Henry is still my son, not yours."

"He's not a chew toy to be fought over, and besides, once he's 18, you lose whatever say you may have over him," Emma snapped back. "And hey! Guess what? I'm Immortal, and I've got nothing but time. I can be very patient when I have to be."

"We'll see about that!" Regina then made to attack her, but the Sheriff moved before the magic-less mayor could do anything more than that.

She practically blurred across the room and had Regina thrown up against the wall, her arm up against her throat as her other hand held both the mayor's hands above her head. "We keep meeting like this," Emma whispered right into the brunette's face.

"Well, you are a barbarian from the time of barbarians," she shot back.

"Says the Evil Queen from a realm that hasn't even gotten to its Industrial Age yet," the blond countered easily.

"Tell me, Sheriff, is there a reason you enjoy manhandling me so, or is it senility settling in and you're confusing me for someone else?"

"Mm, wouldn't you like to know," Emma smirked, moving closer as though for a kiss, but she pulled back at the last second when it looked like Regina would either start fighting, or actually kiss her back.

"Emma, that's enough," Snow called, pulling her daughter back. "Now, I'm still trying to understand here. You're immortal, you can do magic, and you've been to other Realms before? Then… what was this past year? If you knew and believed already, why…?"

"Why wait? Why not break the Curse immediately?" Emma filled in for her. By the consensus of nods she received, she figured she'd guessed correctly.

"Because it is one thing to know magic exists, to know other Realms exist, or to know that I'm from the Enchanted Forest," she said. "And it is something else entirely to believe that I'm related to Snow White, and that an otherwise completely ordinary town is actually the site where a bunch of cursed people from the Enchanted Forest have been stuck, frozen in time, for over two hundred years."

"What are you talking about?" Regina snapped.

"The Curse was enacted on the day of my birth, right?" she asked.

"That's right," Snow agreed.

"I have been alive for two-hundred and twenty-eight years," she told them.

"That is impossible!" the dark-haired woman in the black and white power suit exclaimed. "Storybrooke has only been here for twenty-eight years! I should know, I lived every day of them, here in this house! Counting each and every one of them! I would know if we'd been here for two hundred years! Because I… well, I would know!"

"What about our land?" David asked, feeling a subject change was in order. "What about the Enchanted Forest? Is there some way to get back to it?"

Emma shrugged. "I have no idea. The last time that I tried to get there, the White Rabbit and I were nearly stuck there, permanently. Everything is frozen. And not like north pole frozen, like time has literally stopped and not even the air was moving."

"But that was part of the Curse," Henry pointed out. "Time was frozen, until the Savior came to break the Curse. And then it would begin to unravel."

"Then chances are that it isn't frozen anymore, hasn't been since the day after I got here, I'd wager," Emma conceded. "Everything is still there, just rather… desolate looking. Not that I had a lot of time to look things over before we had to get out of there. Only reason we weren't frozen was because Percy kept the hole open for as long as he did."

Everyone there, except for Emma, Henry and Regina, breathed a sigh of relief.

"So what now?" Red, formerly Ruby, asked.

"Now we need to find some answers, and Regina needs to be locked up," Snow answered. "For her safety, and for ours."

"Great," Emma said, not without a small amount of sarcasm. "Would anybody happen to know of a place where we could put her that _every single person in town_ doesn't already know the location and means of access to? We just saw a mob form from the word of the Chief Surgeon of the Hospital! I sincerely doubt we can trust people's 'good intentions' at this particular time. Trust me, I've seen it before. We need to hide her, not put her in the jail where she can be gotten to."

"And what would you suggest, Sheriff?" the woman in question inquired.

Frowning in thought for a moment, Emma considered her options. Then she smiled. Regina decided then and there that she really didn't like that smile on the blond Immortal's face.

 _Clock Tower_

"You are insane!" Regina protested, physically leaning back away from the open elevator they were standing in front of.

"It kept Maleficent locked up, and she was a dragon," Emma argued logically. "Reason stands, that it will hold you for a few days until everybody calms down."

"I'd rather risk the jail cell, thank you very much," the brunette snapped.

"Don't worry, Your Majesty," Emma smiled, "I'll protect you. And if the dragon isn't actually dead, I'll save you. I'm good at that, if you recall."

"How long do you expect me to remain… sequestered?" she asked, arms crossed.

"Hopefully no more than a few days, but as long as a year," she answered straight-forward.

"A _year_?!" Regina screamed.

"It's not _that_ long," Emma shrugged. "Tell you what, an even three hundred days, two months shy of a full year. And it's not like I'm putting you in solitary confinement. Those of us that still like you for… well, you, we'll visit every day. And yes, that includes my son."

" _My_ son!" she retorted.

"Our son then," Emma shrugged. She was over two hundred years old. She'd learned when and how to compromise a long time ago, and it wasn't worth the grief in the long run.

"Are you getting some sick, twisted enjoyment out of this, Sheriff Swan?" she sneered, arms still crossed, and not yet moving one step closer to the elevator.

"Oh, you mean imprisoning you the same way that I was imprisoned when I was carrying Henry?" she dryly remarked. "Thereby allowing you to adopt him and become his mother, so you think that by imprisoning you now, I'm ensuring that I get to become his mother over you?"

The Evil Queen blinked in shock. She was usually much better at hiding her thoughts, though not her emotions, than this. Or perhaps Emma Swan was just that good? Or perhaps the revelation about the woman's true age was just throwing her off? Yeah, that had to be it.

"Not everybody in the world is as… evil-minded as you are, Regina," Emma told her gently. "This really is for your protection. Stay down here while I head out to deal with Gold. He obviously used that egg to bring magic here to Storybrooke, but he did it by lying and stealing. So, he's going to be the one to sit in the jail cell for a few days."

"Hah!" Regina actually laughed out loud. "Good luck with that, Sheriff. If you recall, what won you the election and your current title wasn't that you opposed me, nor that you saved my life. It was that you stood up to Gold, and because everyone in this town is terrified of him. For good reason, I might add. As powerful as you may be, Emma, he is infinitely more so."

"I've faced powerful ancient forces of evil before," she responded. "Guess who is still here?"

"Don't get cocky," she warned.

"You're stalling," Emma pointed out. "Stop stalling. I'll go down with you, make sure nothing that is down there will hurt, or kill you, and then I'll go take care of Gold. I'll be gone, maybe, at most for a few hours and then I'll be back with Henry and dinner. I swear."

Regina scowled, but the one thing you could always count on, was that while the bad guys always lied and said things like 'trust me' while holding their crossed fingers behind their backs, when the good guys said stuff like that and swore oaths and made promises, they really meant it and you could usually count on them to come through on said oaths and promises. Unless a bad guy was doing things that interfered, of course. Considering the bad guy in this case was Rumplestiltskin, she feared that the 'interference' would be that he would kill the Immortal before she could make good on her promises here and now.

Finally, and she could not begin to explain why, she chose to believe in her adversary of the past year and finally took the necessary steps toward the elevator. Sheriff Swan walked in after her and then signaled to her father to activate the elevator and send them down.

"Is this really about protecting me, Sheriff?" Regina asked the moment she was assured of their relative privacy.

"Nope," she said straight up, dropping the mask. "That was for my, uh, parents benefit. I need to know something and my only options for finding out the truth is at the bottom of this elevator shaft… or seeing what happens when the mob finally gets a hold of you. Given the… permanent nature of what I'm looking to find out, I'd like to extinguish all other options before resorting to… that."

"What is it you want to know? I might already have the answer you're seeking," she smiled that Mayoral Politician Smile of hers.

Emma just smirked and shook her head, not answering.

"Fine then, be that way," Regina huffed, annoyed.

The blond Immortal sighed and said, "I need to know if me coming through the way that I did is what made me Immortal, or just the fact that I'm from another realm and died violently was enough to trigger my Immortality. If it is the latter, than I should be able to sense Maleficent as she would definitely be Immortal now. It would also mean that everybody in town has the potential to be an Immortal. And trust me, that's not a good thing."

"And if it is the former reason?" Regina prompted after a few moments silence.

The elevator came to a stop and the doors were opened automatically.

"Then that would be what we would call the best case scenario," she answered, drawing her sword. Not her father's sword, _her_ sword.

"And the reason you think you'll need that?" she asked. "Didn't you say that you killed the dragon? There is no danger here, Sheriff. You saw to that."

"I would agree with you," Emma said as she stepped out of the door. "Except for the fact that the situation is seeming to be more the latter than the former at the moment."

"What are you talking about?" Regina asked, losing her patience as she stepped outside the elevator.

"Immortals, the kind of Immortal that I am anyway, can sense one another," she explained, before sharing a dark and foreboding look with the Evil Queen. "I can sense another Immortal."

"Well of course you can, dear," a young and non-roaring-dragon voice echoed out from behind them. They both turned and stood there, stunned. Standing just a few feet away, dressed in the same black horned dress that she was best known for, was a pretty blond woman with curly hair, holding a batwing staff and a black horned crown upon her head. Maleficent grinned saucily at the pair, but that was all she did for the moment.

"Maleficent, I presume?" Emma questioned.

"Indeed," the black-clad blond gave a short little bow.

"Do you play the Game?" was the first question Emma needed the answer to.

"What game?" Regina immediately demanded. "Oh yes, that duel-to-the-death game that makes you a killer one-hundred and twenty-eight times over. Explain to me again why you're the better mother for my son, Sheriff Swan?"

Maleficent laughed out loud, rather than conveying the same confusion that Regina displayed, which is what Emma expected-after all the woman had been living in another Realm for who knows how long and given that she _hadn't_ sensed the dragon as an Immortal beforehand, she had thought that she was the one who had caused Maleficent's "First Death". That did not seem to be the case.

"Oh, darling, is that silly little contest still going on?" Maleficent said, still laughing. "I haven't bothered with that for _ages_! I much prefer the power offered to me by magic than some unknown 'Prize' that I would never even be in the running for. I left Earth for other Realms long before even the First Gathering began."

Emma blinked, stunned enough that she lowered her sword in shock.

" _First_ Gathering?" she repeated, her voice a hoarse whisper.

Maleficent just smiled at her mysteriously and started to pace around the two women before her. "Tell me, dear one, just how old are you? Can't be very much. You're powerful, but not _that_ powerful."

"Uh… I'm two hundred twenty-eight," Emma answered, trying to process what was being revealed to her in a bit of pique.

"Really?" the older blond sounded surprised. "How… unexpected. I figured you for at least a thousand. Hm, you are more powerful than your age suggests. What kind of life awaits me on Earth once more?"

"Once more?" both Emma and Regina repeated as a question.

"Congratulations child, and you, Regina, dear," Maleficent, now standing closer to the elevator than they were. "You have just had the secret of the Immortals revealed to you. Immortals are children whose origins lie in other Realms, that grow up and are violently killed here on Earth, the realm _without magic_. That is why all Immortals are foundlings, orphans. They are infants, or very young children, that got lost here on Earth. It is also the consequence of being the only Realm without magic. Magic exists everywhere, after all. For it _not_ to be in abundance here, there is a consequence. The consequence being that it is concentrated and refocused into the Quickening."

"What is the… Quickening?" Regina asked, completely out of her depth.

"Long story, may tell it to you later, shut up for now," Emma warned her. To Maleficent, she asked, "What about the Game? How did that get started?"

"I honestly have no idea," the curly-haired blond replied with a shrug. "For all I know it was a sick joke by a bored Immortal. Or maybe it was a feud that got out of hand. I, quite frankly, am done with the whole thing. I have…" she shot the dark haired mortal a malevolent smile, "... other matters to focus on. Tell me, Regina, what kind of _friend_ leaves the other stuck as a _beast_ at the bottom of a hole, like some kind of guard dragon?!"

"You defied me," the Evil Queen shrugged, stating it as a matter of fact.

"Wow," Emma began to edge away from the clear target of Maleficent's ire. "I can see you both have some issues to work out, so I'll just go ahead and…"

"You, my child, are not going anywhere. I need somebody to guard my _friend_ here, and who better than a fellow Immortal? Meanwhile, I am leaving this forsaken hole in the ground and see what has become of the Dark Curse that you were so desperate for, dear."

"Yeah, about that, I seem to have broken it," Emma spoke up. "Like… a few hours ago."

"That curse is unbreakable, I looked it over enough to know that," Maleficent protested, one step away from the elevator. Emma was intrigued to note that she wasn't actually making that last step.

"Three words," Regina remarked, sounding as annoyed as the few times Emma had ever one-upped her or gotten the best of her in any of their little games during the past year.

"Something that… horrible, defeated by a little kiss? By this woman? I take back what I said about you getting over your failures, Regina. You seem to keep repeating them," Maleficent mocked.

"She seems to have gotten the best of you, for the moment at least," Emma commented.

"What are you talking about?" the purple clad blond snapped.

"I'm talking about why you're even still here," the red-leather clad blond snapped back. "You can't leave can you? In fact, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if what we're looking at is an illusion. I didn't sense any Immortals down here earlier when I killed you. So either you are newly Immortal, or… you're still stuck in dragon mode."

"She has more forms than dragon and human," Regina cautioned the Savior.

"But she's also bound to this place," Emma countered the Evil Queen. "You made it so she cannot leave, didn't you? And even if the curse is done, whatever magic binding her here is still in place, isn't it?"

Maleficent scowled, furious. Regina grinned upon seeing the expression, triumphant.

"It would seem so," she said.

"Great!" she exclaimed, stepping up next to the older Immortal. "So you're only Immortal in human form then? Good to know. Save me some effort from trying to take a dragon's head in the future. Now, I've got a town to sort out. And you two definitely have some issues to work out. So, if you'll excuse me," she squeezed past the other blond back into the elevator and hit the recall button. "Good luck! And try not to kill each other. Friends fight, sure, just don't kill each other. After all, how many friends can you two afford to lose?"

The doors closed and the elevator began to ascend, taking the Savior with it. Looking back at each other from watching the little box disappear into the rock ceiling, the two witches scowled at one another and said at the same time before raising their hands ready to cast lethal magic, "One more!"

 _Gold's Pawn Shop_

Rumpelstiltskin was set to boil, and the only thing keeping him from blowing his top, so to speak, was the presence and calming nature of his once maid and True Love, Belle French. He'd finally gotten her out of those ratty hospital robes that she'd been stuck in for nearly thirty years, and into some respectable clothes. Once that little task was accomplished, he turned his mind to more urgent matters, such as killing Regina in the most painful and long-suffering method available to him as vengeance for what she'd done to his beloved.

Only Belle, bless her soul, had talked him out of it. Or rather, she'd gotten him to promise that _he_ would not kill her. A very distinct difference. He'd always managed to get the most out of his deals with the fine print. Nice to see he hadn't lost his touch.

Just as he was pulling out a very… special trinket from the back of his locked cabinet, making very sure the gloves on his hands were quite secure, the front door to his shop opened with a bang and a crashing ring as the little bell rung its announcement. Carefully wrapping up his weapon-of-choice against the Evil Queen, Gold made his way back to the front and greet his unexpected visitor.

Or perhaps, he silently mused when he saw who was standing in the middle of his shop, not so unexpected.

The heroes of the hour, or to be specific; Emma Swan, David 'Prince Charming' Nolan, Mary Margaret 'Snow White' Blanchard, and assorted. He really didn't care enough to bother looking long enough to properly identify them.

"My," Mr. Gold remarked with mock amusement and veiled anger, "To what do I owe this honor. How is your son doing, Sheriff Swan?"

Moving faster than he-or anyone else had expected, the blond woman charged forward and punched him square in the face. The re-empowered imp staggered back, realizing that he'd gotten out of practice as if he had been in top form that punch never would have landed.

"We need to have a conversation, Gold," the Savior grit out between clenched teeth.

"Yes, indeed, I'm sure we do, dearie, but right now I'm…" he was interrupted when she punched him again, breaking his nose, the sound of the snapping cartilage echoing throughout his skull. The pain was immense, and while the worst of it came after the hit, he had enough control over himself not to scream out loud. Though it was a close thing.

When he finally could speak without fear of crying or cursing, he shot the young (looking) woman a baleful glare and hissed, while holding his bleeding nose, "What was that for, dearie?"

Emma casually ignored the stunned and awed looks worn by those behind her as she cracked her knuckles and answered Gold, "That was for playing with Henry's life. If you wanted to bring magic back, chances are there were other means to get me to get that egg for you without using Henry as the carrot. Don't get me wrong, we have a lot more to… talk about, but I wanted to go ahead and clear the air about that. If you _ever_ risk Henry like that again, whether it pays off or not, I will cut your head off, burn the corpse, and put the ashes in a blessed urn and buried in consecrated ground. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Rumplestiltskin?"

"Yes, dearie," he grunted as he did a bit of on-the-fly magic to heal his nose, "I believe I do."

She glared at him, her eyes flicking and up and down, judging him. She then smirked as she remarked, "No, I don't think you do. Not really. How about that?"

"What are you talking about?" the Dark One growled.

"That is for me to know, and for you to drive yourself crazy trying to find out," she sing-songed.

"Emma," Snow cautioned her daughter.

"Why is Storybrooke still here, if the Curse is broken?" Emma asked, not missing a beat as she jumped topics.

"I would've thought that would be obvious," Gold sneered. "We didn't go back because there is nothing to go back to."

"Liar," she snapped, grinning widely at him.

"A guess," he corrected, before elaborating, "An educated guess. Of course I have no way of knowing whether our world is still there or not. As to why we did not return there once the curse was broken, well, there are only a handful of reasons that I can think of. And I would know."

"The Enchanted Forest is still there, I've been there," Emma countered. "While it was still 'frozen', but it is definitely still there. So what is your next 'educated guess', Gold?"

"You've been to the Enchanted Forest?" he repeated, nonplussed. "You, the woman that couldn't believe in anything, to the point that it nearly cost you your son?"

"Believing in other worlds and magic is a LONG way from believing I'm the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming," Emma said, arms crossed.

"Really?" he mused.

She didn't reply, just continued to glare at him with her arms crossed. He just smiled and asked, "So when was it that you went to the Enchanted Forest and saw it… frozen?"

"When I was twenty-one," she answered.

"So, before you arrived in Storybrooke, you were aware of magic and were travelling to other realms?" he clarified. "And regardless of this fact, you still refused to believe in the Curse and your role in it? At least, not until your son was in danger of dying that is."

"You're trying to provoke me? Really?" Emma laughed. "Fine, we'll play that game. August actually got through to me. I saw his leg as wood, not flesh. And he also told me about his little… encounter with you, Gold. About how you thought that he was-"

"Enough," the man's voice had gone dangerously quiet, silencing the whole room with a word.

Emma just smiled, triumphant, but she held her tongue. For the moment.

She'd learned a lot from Amanda over the years.

"What do you want?" he finally asked, trying hard to ignore that smug grin on her face.

"The truth," she shrugged. "Why are we still here, instead of back in the Enchanted Forest?"

"Because that would defeat the purpose behind the Curse being cast in the first place," he growled between clenched teeth.

"Finding your son," she nodded, understanding. "He's here?"

"He escaped to a world without magic," Gold retorted.

"Several centuries ago," she pointed out.

"A seer foretold that we would meet again," he continued growling. "He's here!"

"Oh," Emma fell back, suddenly subdued. She really _hated_ prophecies and seers.

"Is there a way back to our land?" David spoke up in the uncomfortable silence that filled the shop.

"Possibly," the Pawn Shop Owner reluctantly admitted. "But I neither possess nor am aware of any means immediately available. But then, I'm not the one that actually cast the Curse, merely the one that created it. If there are any escape clauses or bolt holes to be found back to the lands of magic, there is only one person you need speak with. And she'll soon have plenty of trouble of her own."

"What did you do?" Snow immediately asked.

Gold just smirked at her and turned to walk back behind his counter. "I believe we're finished for the time being, Miss Swan. When next you wish to resume our… conversation, please be sure to leave the… audience behind, won't you? I trust you know the way out, dearies?" His glare strongly indicated it would be a mistake to stay any longer.

"Come on, let's go," David said to everyone. "We need to have a few words with our dragon-guarded prisoner."

Only Emma caught the triumphant grin that briefly shot across Gold's face, but she still left with everyone else.

 _Clock Tower_

From Charming's little clue, it was simplicity itself for Gold to figure out where they had stashed Regina for her 'protection', and he'd always been quite sneaky. Needing a cane once more and being out of practice with magic didn't change that at all.

So, appearing behind his chosen target, he watched from the shadows for a brief time as two old friends got to know each other once again.

"So, what secret is it that you share with the Savior of all people, my dear?" Regina questioned, slowly pacing around the dragon-shifter.

"Hm, wouldn't you like to find out," Maleficent crowed, matching Regina step for step so they constantly faced on another, the circle between them getting smaller with each circuit. "You and that monster. You never did tell me, but I figured it out in the end, the one that created the Dark Curse. So, _dearie_ , how did your happy ending turn out?"

Regina stopped pacing and frowned. Maleficent noticed this, but rather than comment, she waited to see what her old friend's true reaction would end up being.

"It… wasn't what I expected," she hesitantly replied, slowly resuming her pacing, but no longer advancing. The curly-haired blond was quick to match her pace once again, mirroring the Evil Queen.

"The Curse wasn't what you expected, or your reaction to getting everything you thought you wanted wasn't what you expected?" Maleficent turned the answer on its head as a question.

Regina sneered out of reflex, but it was plain that her heart wasn't in it.

"I did warn you," Maleficent said, a touch of kindness in her voice, but only a touch. The rest was filled with 'I Told You So!' and they both knew it.

"Yes, yes you did," Regina nodded, her tone seemingly defeated, but then she looked back up, through her eyelashes, and Maleficent could see that the 'Evil Queen' wasn't dead quite yet.

Maleficent couldn't help the flinch when Regina threw up her hand and made to throw something. It was a natural instinct, and she knew how good Regina was with those fireballs of hers. When nothing happened however, she just smiled and started to laugh. That is until a new voice echoed throughout her cave prison.

"Magic is different here," Rumplestiltskin said as he stepped out of the shadows, " _dearie._ As I'm sure you both have noticed."

"I have," the brunette snarled. "I take it this is your doing?"

"Most things are," he confessed with a casual shrug.

"Get to it, Rumple, what do you want? You here to finish the job?" she asked, figuring that he'd always meant to kill her after leaving her tied up earlier that day.

"Finish what job?" Maleficent interrupted. "Oh, are you two fighting again? It's so hard to keep up with you two, making and breaking alliances, double-crossing and planning out contingencies and counters and… gods above, I've got a headache already!"

"Not to worry dearie, you're safe from me," he answered the original question, ignoring the other dark sorceress for the moment.

"I feel so relieved," Regina mocked, stepping closer so she was shoulder-to-shoulder with the Immortal at her side.

"I made a promise to someone that I wouldn't kill you," he explained.

Both women's eyebrows skyrocketed. "Who could get _you_ of all creatures to promise _that_?" Maleficent exclaimed.

"Belle," he answered with a cruel smile.

"She's alive?" Regina tried to sound surprised, emphasis on the word tried.

"You are… a dreadful liar," he growled.

"You really are, darling," Maleficent agreed.

Regina just shrugged off their insults and replied, "I could have killed her, but I didn't."

"You did much worse than that," he snapped. "You kept her alive so you could kill her when it suited you. A fate worse than death. Which," he said as he surged forward and grabbed her wrist with one gloved hand and brought forth a gold medallion with the other, "incidentally, is exactly what I've got in store for you!" He pressed the face of the medallion against her palm.

"Is that…?" she started to ask, but before he could answer or she could finish the question, Maleficent was already in motion.

"No!" the blond cried out and knocked their hands away, sending the medallion flying. She then pushed the Dark One away and shifted to her dragon form. Grabbing Regina with one hand-shaped talon, she flapped her wings a few times and then quickly took off into the deepest parts of the cave.

"Run all you'd like, _dearie_!" he shouted after them. "But this is the one thing that no one can escape; destiny! And I promise; yours is particularly unpleasant!"

 _Sheriff Station_

"I think it is time we had a conversation ourselves, Emma," Snow said as her family walked into the office where her daughter worked.

"Yes," Emma agreed, before short-cutting into, "with Regina. For all we know she has a secret field of magic beans growing around here. We need to find out what… escape routes she put into place when she cast the curse, because according to Gold, that is exactly what she did."

"Don't push it, Snow," David cautioned his wife.

"I'm not," she said back to him.

"Henry, I think you'd better stay with Ruby and Granny for a while, until we have things under control," Emma said to her son, pointedly ignoring her parents.

"I want to see my Mom," he argued. "Maybe I can get her to talk. Be the 'good cop' during the interrogation?"

"Yeah, and when we have time to conduct an interrogation, you absolutely will," she assured him with a loving smile. "But Gold does not make idle threats, I've learned. And he just threatened Regina in a big way. We may not have the luxury of keeping her locked up for long."

"You think Mr. Gold is going to try and hurt my Mom?" Henry asked, far too innocent.

"I think he's going to try and have her killed," she told him, not lying.

"Emma!" Snow exclaimed, scandalized.

"Doesn't mean we're going to let him," she smirked, maintaining eye-contact with Henry.

"Come on, Henry," Ruby/Red said, holding out her hand. "Let's let the parents do the hero thing. You and I can hang out until things have settled down."

Hesitating, looking back and forth between the tall brunette and his blond mom, he finally scrunched up his face into a mask of courage and said, "OK Emma. I'll stay safe and do some research. Prepare for the interrogation. Just… protect her? Please?"

"You got it, Kid," she promised. "Keep him safe, Ruby."

The former waitress/werewolf nodded, took Henry's hand and they left the office soon after.

Snow took the opportunity for what it was, stepping in front of and into Emma's path. "We need to talk," she said.

Emma suddenly looked-and felt-trapped, stammering out a reply, "I… Well, I don't… I just… I don't want to talk."

"Well, I do, OK!" Snow exclaimed, crossing her arms. "Regina can wait. I can't. I mean, you're my daughter, and… I want to talk to you. I know that we have talked. But, we didn't know that _we_ were talking. And we talked about things we probably shouldn't even have talked about–one night stands and the like."

"One night stands?!" David exclaimed, looking over at his wife in surprise.

"Whale," Snow answered the unasked question, wincing even as she confessed.

" _Whale_?!" he screeched.

"We were cursed," she snapped back at him, "That is neither here, nor there. The point is," she said turning back to Emma, "we did not know that we were mother and daughter and, now, we do. And, so… Please, let's talk."

Emma took a long, slow breath, looking the woman that had been her closest friend (in the longest time) for the past year, in the eye and nodded. She asked, "OK. What do you want to talk about?"

"We're together–finally. And I can't help but think you're not happy about it," she observed.

Emma nodded, putting her hands in her pockets. "Oh, I am, happy that is," she answered. "I'm just not the weepy sappy sort. Plus, we've got plenty of shit to deal with right now, so talking over the years where I grew up, enough that I'm now actually older than both of you together, isn't really an option right now. And then there are the secrets."

"What secrets?" Snow asked, concerned, thinking that her flesh and blood hated her and thought that she was keeping secrets from her.

"The secrets that I just confessed to you," Emma whispered. "And the secrets that I'm still keeping from you. We don't have time to go over everything right now, and some of them… some of what I'll eventually tell you is going to make you hate me and probably want to kill me and call me evil."

"What! No, Emma no! Nothing, not anything could _ever_ make me feel like that toward you! I love you! I'll always love you! You're my daughter, for heaven's sake. There is not a thing in this, or any other world that could make me hate you!" Snow instantly protested.

"Emma," David spoke, his tone and voice filled with paternal caring, "Even if you were the greatest evil the land has ever known, we would still love you. We'd stop you at every turn, and punish you like you wouldn't believe, but we'll always love you."

They all broke into laughter at the joke.

Emma smiled, and breathed a soft sigh of relief. No matter how old you get, even centuries old, it is always good to hear your parents say that they love you. She held her tears back through sheer willpower and long experience.

Ducking her head briefly, she looked back up at her parents, Snow White and Prince Charming, and said, "Come on. We'd better get to Regina before Gold does. Even an Immortal Dragon can only do so much against somebody _that_ determined."

 _Old Coal Mine_

They'd finally stopped running when they had reached the absolute boundary that Maleficent could come before the magic began to pull her back to beneath the clock tower.

"You know, I could get us much farther away if you could just… get rid of this little binding you've placed on me?" the blond argued after she'd changed back to human.

"And have you try and kill me a week from now, provided Rumple doesn't succeed in the mean time?" the dark-haired witch growled, dusting herself off. "I don't think so. Besides, there is… something… going on between you and Miss Swan. Who is to say that you might not be safer in your prison, here underground?"

"Risk is inherent in all endeavors, none moreso than the pursuit of freedom," Maleficent stated, though it sounded like a quote, the well-educated Regina Mills couldn't place it. Besides, the other woman hadn't exactly been in a place to take advantage of the opportunity modern communication could afford to one's education.

"Yes, but why should I take that risk?" Regina returned. "Even if you help me now, there is no way to guarantee that either of us would be able to stop what is coming for me. Anyway once you have what you want, you could leave me to my fate, as simple as that."

"True," Maleficent brashly admitted, smirking. Then she suddenly stiffened and her eyes started darting to every dark corner and especially the passageway behind them. Regina tensed accordingly, hoping to figure out how to throw a fireball all over again in the next few seconds. Turns out it was not necessary, at the moment.

" _There_ you are!" a voice called from up above them, echoing down off the stone walls.

Looking up, the two sorceresses saw the blond Savior looking down at them from a crevice in the ceiling. It wasn't open air, but rather a 'cliff' within the mine's infrastructure. Probably an airshaft.

"I'd ask what it is you're doing so far from where I left you," the Immortal Sheriff shouted, "but I've already got a pretty good idea. Geez, Regina, is there _anybody_ in this town that doesn't hate you so much that they want to kill you on sight?"

"I'm sorry, was that a rhetorical question, my dear?" the Mayor snarked back, arms crossed.

"Yeah, well," Emma shrugged and then jumped.

Regina couldn't stop the gasp of concern leaving her lips any more than Maleficent could, and the latter at least knew that the fall wouldn't kill the other blond, at least not permanently. Despite it being a nearly thirty-foot drop, however, neither should've been worried as the woman merely dropped and rolled with the momentum of her fall upon landing, as though it had been barely three and a half feet instead. She was up on her feet and walking toward them without even pausing, showing no sign of being inconvenienced by the fall at all.

"So, Gold is after you, and based on the fact that you're not under the clock tower anymore, and that… extremely suspicious mark on your hand that wasn't there before, he got to you," Emma said, sounding rather cavalier about the whole situation. "What are we dealing with? Curse? Infection? Terminal case of bad luck?"

"If only it were anything so droll, darling," Maleficent sighed.

"A wraith," Regina said, rubbing her palm where the aforementioned mark had just appeared.

Emma blinked. Then she stopped breathing and blinked again, finally letting the air out quite slowly. "Well… shit," she growled. She knew about wraiths. Both in the theoretical and the practical.

"What would you know about it, Miss Swan?" Regina snapped at her.

Emma replied with a phrase spoken in nearly accent-less Tibetan. Both women looked at her as though she'd gone mad. She smirked and gave them a rough translation. "The Qui-shen, the Wraith, is one of the most dangerous creatures in all the known lands, a soul-sucker from the Realm of Shadows and Nightmares. Damaged by light, healed by darkness, unaffected by holy icons or powers, and while it looks like its flying it actually moves more like a butterfly or moth by floating on the essence of magic in the area. They can only be summoned with their amulet and with the… 'permission' of a powerful dark magic user. They can only be banished after they have succeeded in obtaining a soul. To retrieve a soul taken by a wraith, one needs to travel to the Realm of Shadows and Nightmares and basically conduct a trade, one soul for another. Not very bright, they can usually be tricked into taking the soul of an animal or one that it already possessed in exchange."

Now they were both looking at her like she was a walking, talking miracle.

"What?" she asked, shrugging.

"How do you know all that?" Maleficent demanded.

"Had to deal with a Qui-shen or two in my life. Made sure to study up after my first encounter, and a good thing I did as my second encounter… well, let's just say that they don't call it the Realm of Shadows and Nightmares because of a heavy cloud cover," she explained.

"So, you'll retrieve my soul when it comes to get me?" Regina scoffed.

"You've still got your soul, don't you?" Emma shot back. "Come on, we need to get out of here and to a more defensible location. Preferably one with a lot of light."

"By any chance are you forgetting, darling," Maleficent interrupted, "That I cannot go anywhere?"

Emma blinked, then looked back and forth between the two sorceresses, tilting her head like a curious puppy. "Sure you can. Here, let me help you," she then drew her sword and stabbed the older blond through the heart before either could react at all.

"So now you're true colors show," Regina snarled, stepping back. "You're going to kill me, aren't you? Well get it over with already. It's better than what I have waiting for me as it is."

Emma just rolled her eyes and caught the dead body before it could fall all the way to the ground, having pulled her sword free out of reflex. "Don't worry, your majesty, I'll carry her until we're outside of the spell's influence. Then you get to carry her until she revives. And no, I'm not going to kill you. I'm not carrying two bodies, and you know as well as I do that if anybody kills a wraith-marked before the wraith gets to them, they themselves become marked. I'm not about to risk what would happen if a wraith got their hands on a Quickening…" She actually shivered at the thought.

 _City Hall_

 _Nearly Sundown_

"Huuunnhhh! * _GASP_ * OW!" Maleficent screamed as she arched her back, reviving on the couch in Regina's office while the other two were at the conference table there. "Was that _really_ necessary?" the blond sorceress accused, glaring at the blond sheriff.

"Yes," came the short reply. "You're not stuck in that cave anymore, are you?"

"There had to be a more painless way to kill me though," she grumbled, getting up off the couch and stalking over. "Oh, and if living underground wasn't bad enough, now there are stains on my dress. This is absolutely ruined."

"So change it," Emma snapped back, turning most of her attention toward Regina. "So, what is in the box?"

"Did Henry really ask you to protect me?" the Mayor asked instead of answering.

"Yes," she replied, noticing how the Evil Queen's expression lit up at the answer. Then she opened the box and revealed an overly large top hat that would be large on a head the size of a basketball. "The hat! You had it all along?"

"What do you mean?" Regina said, showing confusion. Though whether it was at the accusation, or of Emma actually knowing the object she held, was anyone's guess.

"That's Jefferson's Hat!" Emma said, pointing.

"... Who is Jefferson?" she responded after a pause.

Both blonds in the room snorted, one in disbelief, the other in amusement. Thankfully before anything could progress much further than that, the Charmings arrived in full force.

"Torches," David explained the brooms they were carrying, "for when it comes back. I know it's old fashioned, but so am I."

"So, how does it work?" Snow asked, laying her burden down on the table.

Rather than answer immediately, the dark haired witch picked up the hat and started walking out toward the staging area they'd all agreed upon earlier. Before any prattling could begin, thankfully, she deemed to answer the question hanging in the air just as they entered the Meeting Hall. "It will open a portal to our land. All we have to do is send the Wraith in there."

"Oh yeah, just that," David sarcastically retorted.

"Lucky for you all that there is more than just one magic user available," Maleficent commented, bringing up the rear.

"Why is she here again?" he asked, but was ignored.

"I don't understand," Snow confessed. "I thought our land was gone, or frozen, or something. How can we open a portal to a place that doesn't exist?"

David began lighting the 'torches' as Regina knelt and began working with the hat to open the portal while replying, "That is true. By sending it to a place that no longer exists... well, that's banishing it to oblivion. And portals to oblivion are actually the most simplest of portals to open, believe it or not." At that moment the lights began to flicker wildly before failing completely as the wailing of the wraith can be heard in the distance. The rapidly closing distance.

"Regina," Emma called.

"I'm trying!" the brunette hissed, spinning the ratty old top hat again and again, but failing to activate it.

The doors burst open and the wraith is upon them.

"I think I'll need my staff for this," Maleficent declared, raising one hand to lash out with dragonfire, and to conjure her coiled winged crystal orb staff with the other, while Snow and David both tried to poke the dark creature with their broom-torches.

Emma reached out and put her arms around Regina's, focusing her energies alongside the Evil Queen. Instantly, she noticed a difference and on her next attempt to spin the hat and open the portal, the magic activated and purple energy began to spew forth from the magical artifact. Startled by the effect as much as the source of the energy, the brunette shot the blond holding her a hard glare. She hated surprises, and Miss Swan was full of them!

"Look out!" Snow cried.

The wraith had made it past the flames and Maleficent's fireballs in a rush shortly after portal was opened. It wanted the marked one and was desperate to get her. With Snow's shouted warning, however, Emma reacted just in time, shoving the woman in her arms out of the way and to the floor, out of reach, while diving out of the way herself. Unfortunately, she didn't dive far enough, as she felt a cold, burning grip latch onto her leg, and the next thing she knew, she was falling.

' _Well, shit..._ ' was the last thought in her head before she was falling through the portal.

"EMMA!" Snow screamed, watching the wraith drag her daughter down to what she believed was oblivion. Immortal or not, she couldn't lose her daughter again, not after just getting her back.

"What are you doing?!" David shouted when his wife charged toward the closing portal.

"I'm not losing her again!" she proclaimed, and then she jumped.

"Neither am I!" he decided and climbed up on the banister and jumped after her… only to fall flat on his face as the portal closed and he crushed the spinning hat beneath him.

 _The Enchanted Forest_

 _Abandoned Castle of Sleeping Beauty_

There was an explosion of stone and dust. Moments before, the air had been filled with a tense silence, the armored warrior wary and at the ready. Not even such an experienced fighter could be prepared for what happened next however.

A _Qui-shen_ , a wraith flew up out of the explosion, obviously disoriented by its sudden appearance in a strange land, it flew about in circles before cringing away from the light of the sun and flying off towards the shadows of the forest in the distance. The warrior and the prince placed themselves before the princess to protect her, but thankfully their swords, which would not have done much of anything, were unneeded before the wraith flew off.

Before any of the trio could say or do anything further, there was another noise that drew their attention to the rubble where the wraith had appeared in the explosion.

"* _ **GASP**_ *! Aarrgghh! * _ **cough**_ * * _ **cough**_ * * _ **cough**_ * What the…? Ow! OK, not moving that for a minute or two," a pained voice cried out from beneath the rubble. "Geez, I'm glad I'm immortal, otherwise I know I'd have a concussion."

"Who is there?" Philip demanded, stepping forward, sword at the ready.

The rubble moved, revealing a battered and bruised blond woman in tight fitting clothing consisting of a red jacket, white shirt, and blue 'leggings'. Her blue eyes looked sharply at her surroundings, taking them and the situation in at an instant, and in the next she was on her feet, sword in hand, though held low and at her hips.

"Hello," she greeted them with a stiff nod. "I am Emma Swan. This is my mother, Mary Margaret. Some call her Snow White. First question, where are we? Second question, where is the wraith? Third and final question, who are you?"

"You brought the wraith here?" the fully-armored warrior snapped.

Everyone, except for Snow and Philip looked to the warrior in surprise.

"You're a woman?" the princess asked, surprised.

"[Chinese: What is your name warrior?]" Emma asked in precise Mandarin, with a Tibetan accent.

"Fa Mulan," the warrior answered, sounding surprised even as she removed the hood and helmet covering her face.

"Of course it is," Emma sighed, speaking English once more. "If Disney ever comes out with a 'Princess Swan' movie or cartoon, I am so suing their asses into the next millennium. But seriously, where's the wraith?"

"It flew off toward the forest, toward darkness," Mulan answered.

"That's… not good," Emma frowned, kneeling next to her mother to help her out of the rubble. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the prince kneel down and reach for something… with his bare hand!

"Don't touch that!" she shouted, throwing out a spell intended to merely knock his hand aside. He went flying back toward the thorn covered pavilion.

"Whoa," Emma blinked, stunned.

Mulan was not so affected.

Striking forward like a snake, she had her sword at Emma's throat before the princess, Aurora, could finish screaming in surprise. It served its purpose in drawing Emma out of her stupor, but not to the effect Mulan was hoping for, as the blond immortal rolled back away from the edge of the blade and then like a mongoose with the cobra, got around behind the Chinese warrior and used her own knife to disable her and keep her from attacking.

"Don't attack me," she whispered while holding the knife to the Asian woman's throat, "it puts me in a bad mood. Now how about we all calm down, and not do anything stupid. Like picking up the wraith's medallion and getting its mark on you?"

Mulan relaxed a fraction when she noticed what Emma was referring to on the ground, and realized what she had saved her friend from.

"Philip, did you actually touch it?" she asked her traveling companion for the past few years. "Is there a mark upon your hands?"

Startled, and realizing himself what had almost happened, the prince looked down at his hands and sighed in relief upon recognizing there was no foreign or magical mark upon them. Shaking his head, he answered, "No, I don't think I actually made contact with it. Thank you, Emma Swan, it seems I owe you my life, if not more."

"Certainly your soul," she remarked, releasing Mulan and handing the knife back to the warrior-woman.

"Who are you?" Aurora demanded.

Emma shot the princess a look, smirking slightly, then shot more calculating looks between Philip and Mulan. _Interesting_ , she mused.

"That is something of a long story," she answered. "And I have no issues with telling it, if you have no issues with a wraith roaming the countryside looking for random souls to devour."

"We have no means of defeating a wraith," Mulan logically pointed out.

Emma gestured and the wraith's medallion floated up off the ground, saying, "I beg to differ. We have the only means of defeating this wraith, right here. And I gotta say, the magic in this realm is unbelievably potent!"

"You're a sorceress?" Aurora gasped, although it was more like whimpered, as she fell back into her True Love's embrace.

Emma shrugged as she fashioned a bag for the amulet from a random scrap of cloth off the ground. "Trained by a witch," she answered. "But not to worry, I only ever use my powers for good. Sorry about that, by the way, Prince…?"

"Prince Philip," he bowed in introduction. "This is my True Love, Princess Aurora, and my companion, Mulan, who you have already been introduced to. And not to worry. I've had bigger tumbles, and you did save my life with that act."

"Aurora, huh? Well, Sleeping Beauty," she turned to help her mother, who was just coming to, out of the rubble, "meet Snow White. I'm her daughter, by the way. But you can just call me Emma."

"Oh, Emma…? What… what happened?" Snow asked, holding her head as she tried to steady herself on her feet.

"Portal, wraith, any of this ringing any bells?" Emma asked, concerned.

"Where are we?" she asked, taking a moment to really think things through.

"The thorn-covered palace of Sleeping Beauty, apparently," Emma remarked teasingly.

"Wait, what?" Snow snapped.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" Aurora snapped at the same moment.

"We're in the Enchanted Forest?" Snow grabbed for her daughter's attention.

"Yes," Mulan answered for her.

"I wouldn't know," Emma said. "I only ever visited the Enchanted Forest once, and that was while it was still frozen in time. But Sleeping Beauty being here, not to mention Mulan of all people, kind of points to us being in the Enchanted Forest."

" _Why_ do you keep calling me that?!" Aurora cried out.

"It is a… really long story," Emma sheepishly admitted. "And again, wraith, roaming the forest, do we really have time for long stories?"

"I thought that…" Snow started to say, but Emma interrupted her.

"Surprise, surprise, they lied. We already knew that. Anyway, got the medallion now, so we can actually banish the wraith. Catch is, we kind of need to do it before sundown."

"Why?" Mulan asked.

"Because then we lose our only real advantage," Emma pointed up at the sky. "The light. It is weakened and vulnerable, and what's more, we can corner it in the shadows. No sun, no light, no advantage. Still possible to banish it, but during the day is easier than at night."

"You never did explain how you knew so much about wraiths," Snow commented as they all prepared to leave.

"Sure I did," Emma said.

"No, you didn't," she insisted. "All you really said is that you studied them after barely surviving one, and defeating another. That doesn't explain much."

"You've faced a Qui-shen before?" Mulan asked as they mounted the horses. There were only two, and Aurora was obviously going to ride with Philip.

"Two," the blond answered. "Not counting this one, which I guess technically makes it three now. And really there isn't much to the story at all. A wraith was haunting a village I was passing through at the time, I tried to fight it off, figured out its weaknesses pretty easily, but it still got the one that it was after, the ones marked by it. I studied up on what they are and how to best them. Next one I came across, well, it got somebody close to me, so I fought it, then put myself into a coma to travel to the Realm of Shadows and Nightmares to trade out the soul of my friend for that of a snake I just so happened to have in my pocket at the time. Speaking of, anybody got any pets, or know where we can find a snake or two?"

"Why?" Aurora asked.

"A wraith can only be banished after it takes a soul," she explained. "Fortunately, that doesn't have to be a human soul, and some animals, like snakes, actually like their realm better than most."

"There are many serpents in the woods," Mulan commented in reply to that.

"Well, good, considering that is where the wraith went, that is where we have to go to draw it out," the Immortal said with a shrug.

"Do you have any weapons we can borrow?" Snow asked, already preparing for the fight to come.

"While I am by no means demeaning to women as fighters," Philip said, "I do not intend to allow untrained peasants to fight when there are others more capable."

"Oh, sorry," Emma smirked, "did we forget to introduce her? She's Snow White."

Philip blinked and exchanged looks with Aurora. Mulan merely continued readying for the fight to come and preparing their spare weapons.

"Snow White, as in…?" Aurora started to ask.

"Yes," the former princess turned conquering queen interrupted. "Weapons?"

"We don't have much, but you may take these," Mulan handed over a bow and quiver of arrows and a shortsword.

"I'm good," Emma waved off whatever was being handed to her. Reminded of her own weapons, she drew her glock and began checking her ammunition and the state of the gun.

"We should get moving," Mulan advised, looking to Philip. It was clear where her loyalties lie, indicating to the blond Immortal that she wouldn't be leading any time soon. Nor should she, she realized. She'd never been to the Enchanted Forest, not for real, and she had little clue how things worked here now. Keeping that in mind, she likewise differred to Snow, as she would be more experienced in this environment, but at the same time resolved to not allow herself to be downtrodden by anyone.

"Agreed," Philip nodded. "Snow… I mean, Your Majesty, Queen Snow, if I might ask that you stay here with Princess Aurora while we deal with the immediate threat. We should return by morning and then we can move on from here."

"Philip, no!" Aurora whined. "I will not be separated from you again!"

Emma glanced at her friend/mother, waiting to see what she would do.

"That's actually a good idea," Snow acknowledged. "Aurora and I can get some fires going, maybe prepare a meal for your return. Either way, if you have the wraith taken care of before or after nightfall, a lot of light would be useful. Especially in a defensible position."

"That's settled then," Emma said. "The warriors go out and slay the beast while the princesses slash queens stay home and cook."

The way everybody frowned at her, she knew her 'joke' had been received exactly the way it had been intended to be. "Or," she continued, "we could do the smart thing and stick together? Strength in numbers and all that. Not to mention, we're going to be using torches more than swords in this fight. Just saying."

An hour later, they reached the woods and were tracking down the wraith. All of them, together.

"So, how does one go about tracking something that flies?" Philip asked, leading the way through the forest path.

"It doesn't fly," Emma said, exasperated as she brought up the rear. "It flutters, like a butterfly, on the currents of magic in the area. At no point does it actually fly. There is also a limit to how high it can go off the ground."

"How high is that?" Mulan questioned.

Frowning now, the Savior of Storybrooke answered, "Unfortunately, it varies. Depends on the amount of ambient magic in the area. Expect more than twenty feet on the low side, but no more than fifty feet."

"That is… quite high," Mulan commented.

"Well, good news is that it can't take a soul outside of a single meter's range, so it'll have to come down to us if it wants anything, and now that we have our little forked tongue friend here, that is kind of what we want anyway," Emma said, the latter part in baby-talk to the garden snake wrapped around her wrist.

"How _do_ we banish a wraith, Emma?" Snow asked her daughter.

"Like this," the Immortal said as she pulled out the medallion and pressed it against the scaled flesh of the serpent on her wrist. There was a soft sizzling sound, but the snake did not react in the slightest. When she pulled it away, the same mark that Snow recalled seeing on Regina's palm was across the back of the garden snake, though it was only 'whole' because it was wrapped several times around her daughter's wrist.

A loud wail echoed throughout the forest.

Everyone tensed and prepared for a fight, but Emma just calmly pulled the snake from her wrist and allowed it to slither away through the grass. Within moments, the wraith appeared from the shadows and began to hunt for the one bearing its mark; the snake in the grass.

Before anyone could do much of anything in the face of the demon, Emma quickly moved, taking one of the torches and tossing it over the wraith into the dry grass on the other side of the clearing. It was enough to snap Snow and Mulan out of their stupor and they too tossed their torches to either side of the wraith, which was still set on capturing the snake bearing its mark to notice or care about the danger it was in.

Calling upon memories and her rudimentary magic, Emma reached out with both hands and the fires that had started, and very likely would have started an unstoppable forest fire, suddenly shot up with renewed energy and focus, reforming into a ring of flame around the feasting wraith, trapping it. Careful not to let the metal touch her skin, she held up the wraith's medallion so it reflected the last rays of daylight as well as the firelight surrounding the dark creature. She then began the banishment spell, adding her own twist to things to ensure this particular wraith would never bother anybody again, summoned or not.

Seven lines of chanting later, the flames all converged on the black creature and opened up a vortex to the realm of nightmares and shadows. Emma casually tossed the medallion into the flaming portal moments before it closed.

"That was… impressive," Mulan commented in the final moments of twilight before the sun finally set.

"Eh," Emma shrugged, adjusting her red jacket. "I was rushed, so I improvised. Now that the mess has been cleaned up, let's turn our attention to the issues at hand. Mary Margaret… er, Snow, how do we get back home? Because I only ever travelled with the White Rabbit from Wonderland, and I don't exactly have Percy's cell phone number on me."

 _Storybrooke_

 _City Hall_

 _Moments After Portal Closed_

David slowly got up from where he'd landed. Horrified, he looked down at what his reckless move had done, crushing the magic hat beneath his body, near destroying it by all appearances. Getting up, he tried to fathom what had just happened, and what he would need to do next to find his family.

That was when he was reminded, rather abruptly, that he wasn't as alone as he'd thought, and his company was two witches. Two witches that hated each other, but they both equally hated him more. That, however, paled drastically in comparison to the overwhelming fury he felt welling up inside of him. Getting to his feet, he rounded on Regina and roared out, "Where are they?!"

The brunette seemed to contemplate her answer before looking up and saying in a straightforward tone, "I have no idea," while looking Prince Charming right in the eye.

He stalked forward, silently pleased to see the witch actually retreating from him, but the fury had given way to his true nature, his better nature. Still, he needed to know. "Are they dead?"

"The Curse," Regina tried to explain to him, "it destroyed _all_ the lands…"

"ARE THEY DEAD?!"

"I don't know!" she answered with a shout.

The fury overwhelmed his 'better nature' in an instant as he hissed out, "I should have killed you myself!" He then made to strangle her, or something, but she acted first.

Putting her hand on his chest, she growled back, "Well then, what's stopping you?" She then pushed back and he was forced to backpedal, and at one point he felt that his feet were actually skidding along if not leaving the ground entirely. She slammed him up against the far wall, having actually pushed him three-quarters of the way across the room to get there, and then with but a thought, the 'pictures' on the wallpaper came to life and wrapped him up, holding him in place against the wall.

"Well, isn't this… fortuitous," Maleficent remarked as she stepped forward behind Regina, twirling her staff as she did so.

"You think you're some heroic prince," Regina snapped at the trapped man. Looking him up and down as he struggled to even breath, she scoffed. "Please, you're nothing but the son of a sheppard."

Grinning maniacally, she raised her hand, fully intending on ripping the man's heart out as she repeated his words back at him, "I should have killed you when I could. Now? Now I can."

Before she could get any further than threats, Maleficent gestured with her staff and the Evil Queen was flung back away from Prince Charming. "Tut tut, my dear," the blond admonished. "I have my own… issues to deal with this one. Get in line."

"Mom?" a voice called from the front of the room, causing everybody to freeze in place.

Turning, they saw ten-not-yet-eleven-year-old Henry Mills standing there, wide-eyed and fearful. Regina immediately was on her feet crying out, "Henry!"

"What's going on?" he asked, concern radiating out from him. "Where's Emma? What happened?"

Maleficent waved her staff and David was released from his wallpaper-vine prison. Then, before anybody could stop her or otherwise react, she stepped forward and grabbed Henry by the chin, looking him in the eye.

"Who… who are you?" Henry stammered, suddenly very afraid.

"Hm," she mused. "How… curious. Is this your son, Regina?"

"Yes," the Evil Queen snarled. "Now step away from him before I destroy you!"

"You truly do not understand anything, do you?" Maleficent commented with a glance over her shoulder at her old friend.

"What are you talking about?" the raven-haired sorceress growled, trying to grasp that feeling of magic that she'd had moments ago, but was already fading.

Releasing Henry, the blond turned back to the recovering Prince Charming. "You and I have unfinished business… Charming. But now is not the time to discuss said business. I need to find someone, and the best bet that I ever had of finding them was just sent through a portal that by all accounts cannot be opened again. So for now, count me as your ally. Until the Forester returns and helps me find who I am looking for, that is. Once that is done, you, Snow and I will have a reckoning. Be sure of that."

With that said, she turned and stormed out of the room, brushing past Henry without so much as a glance at him or Regina. Charming, however, looked almost sick with worry and guilt, a fact that Regina took great relish in noting.

"Grandpa?" Henry questioned in a small, very young, voice.

"It'll be OK, Henry," David assured his grandson, taking the young boy in a hug. "We'll get them back. Somehow.

END _Chapter One: Divergence_


End file.
